World Championships – Sunday – Block and Knockout

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Results from the round robin stage can be viewed here.

Results from the knockout round can be viewed here.

Tamborine Mountains kicking off the final round with their final match against Macao China at 9:00 am local time. Canberra and Southport play at 11:00am.

Day 1 included some interesting results with Japan looking to have the strongest presence in knockout phase but they will be joined by a number of surprise packets with Taiwan, Brazil looking to have multiple finalists and Macao, Korea also with strong results. There may be surprises as well with the USA, Uruguay and Russia currently unbeaten and fighting for a spot in the last 24.

Results from Australian teams and photos will be posted progressively throughout the day.

Australian Results

Tamborine Mountain Raptors 17 – China Macao 9

Canberra 12 – Taichung (Taiwan) 9

Southport 13 – Europe 9

In addition to these updates the following websites are expected to be progressively updated during the tournament.

World Gateball UnionWorld Championship Website

Japan Gateball Union Website

Japan Gateball Union Blog

Japan Gateball Union Facebook

The finals and closing ceremony will be streamed live on USTREAM. Knockout Phase : 13:30-17:00 AEST

*The four final games will be broadcasted

Awards and Closing Ceremony : 17:30-18:30 AEST

Play has commenced. Raptors loss the toss and are following against Macao. Aggressive start from the Raptors. Smaller crowd in this morning, expected to fill up during the day. Yesterday Canberra were on one of the grandstand courts and got to play in front of a crowd of about two thousand. image image

Score is 9 – 5 to Macao with 11 minutes remaining. Raptors fighting back. Good turn from David and then long gate touch for Barrie. Raptors charging home with vocal crowd from all countries. Raptors have now taken the lead! Herman and Carol peg Raptors win 17 – 9.

Apologies for the delay, we’ve been playing. Southport outplayed Europe and won by 4, unfortunately they needed to win by 10 in order to get into the knockout phase. A few refereeing mistakes unfortunately had an impact on the match. Uruguay will go through in the block.

Canberra played their best game to triumph over the previously undefeated team from Taiwan. The was always in the balance until a long rush by Alex, long tight to the line touch by Kristina, long touch by Bryan and a gate and touch by Glen (set up by Tim) turned the match. The Taiwanese team will go through in the block.

The block stage is now complete. Today was a top day for Aussie teams with 3 wins from 3 matches. Although Australia did not meet its goal of getting out of its block it did record it’s best ever performance at a world championship.

All Australian teams recorded at least one win with overall five wins from nine matches. Looking forward to the finals don’t forget the live steaming (details above).

The finals have commenced first round will bring 24 teams down to 16. I’m currently watching a young and vocal Brazillian team take an early lead over a top Japanese team. Japan fighting back. Brazil gate and touch back in control. Very vocal.

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Results include Brazil over Japan, China over Brazil, Macao over Taiwan and Taiwan over Japan. 16 teams remain. Australian referee team have been selected to officiate all Japan match.

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Australian referees did an excellent job. Final 16 comprises 6 from Japan, 2 from Brazil, China, Korea, Taiwan and 1 from Uruguay and Macao. Lots of stress around the stadium, biggest crowd is for China vs Japan match. Pictures of shopping and Australian results below.

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Final 8 are Brazil, China x2, Macao, Japan x 3, Taiwan. Big crowds at all courts. China on top of Brazil early 9 -2, 20 minutes remain. The other China team on top of Japan who are still keeping 3 balls off, 15 minutes remain. 5 mins remain, China will defeat Brazil and Japan. Japan through in other quarter and the fourth semi spot is in the balance between Macao and Taiwan.

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Semis won by China over Taiwan and Japan over China in a miracle finish. Peg needed to win on the last shot and he nailed it, crowd goes nuts. Final between Shanxi Linfen China and Joshokiryu, Japan. Japan have won the toss and willplay red. 8 minutes in, China in control still lots of balls to come on. 4-6. 15 mins left, China now 6-5 ahead, keeping Japan off the court.

China are world champions winning the final 12 – 8. Japan were coming home but ran out of time. China are celebrating. Pictures below. China hitting accuracy and depth of an exceptional standard.

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Closing ceremony completed. End of a great tournament. Australian teams saying farewells to other teams.

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That’s it for today. Thanks for your readership and comments. We have registered a record number of visits to the website on each of the three days and recorded over 3,500 visits over the past two weeks. Gateball.com.au will post a full review of the championships in the coming weeks.

Additional: Chris Wentworth from Southport (one of the youngest players in the competition) was one of the most photographed players and was very popular with opposing teams.

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Gilon Smith made the back page of the Niigata newspaper with the ceremonial gate.

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Australia’s participation in the 2014 World Gateball Championship has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Japan Foundation.

3 thoughts on “World Championships – Sunday – Block and Knockout

  1. Well done everyone and hope you enjoyed the experience! Thanks to admin for the updates and reports. Without this it would have been hard to know what was going on. Love ya work!

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