Michael Scott

That's a bad miss by Australia but it might be a good lesson moving forward.

Johnson getting that gold after a brilliant season and it was great to see Lee just sneaking in for bronze! Also outstanding job by Bernd Berkhahn to coach both winners.

Seems odd that the sport is heading in a direction of trying to make things safer but then a stage like this happens where even a clueless idiot like myself expected this to happen.

They had a massive opportunity after the last Olympics and they seemingly completely dropped the ball. The interest is there but they need to be focusing on generating interest through the media. It's an entertaining sport (as evident by the positive reception it had at the start of the olympics) and the sport is a highlights package of ten second clips but how often do you see it pop up on social media? Also how often does a tournament sneak up on you because you had no idea it was happening and it was your calendar that saved you? They can make their tournaments more scalable but it will only be a short term fix and it will probably dilute their 'revenue base' in the long run. Also gimmicks such as rebranding it SVNS only showed them as decision makers who are out of touch.

A shame that the Australian program seems to be disappearing after showing a lot of initial promise. Once Timmings and Makrides give it away then there will be no one (which won't be too far away). Would have thought Narracott's silver at the Olympics might have revived things but it hasn't unfortunately. They seemed to have a good thing going with converting the beach sprinters so not sure what happened there.

Yeah pretty ordinary day so far. We haven't dropped any expected gold medals but we have dropped a few medals. Some positives: Mens Water Polo Penny Smith looking good to qualify for the Womens Trap Final despite a poor start in the first round Ebden/Peers moving the Men's Doubles QF where they will probably be favourites. Granollers/Carreno Busta weren't an easy pair to beat so that was a good win. Grae Morris working his way back into the top 10 after looking not so great at the beginning although he isn't going to get the express route to the semis or final it seems. Chalmers looks great for the 100m Free and looks like Qin Haiyang might not be as big of a threat to ZSC now as initially thought. Martin and Diehm got the job done in BMX qualification Other than that quite a bit of bad. Like yourself, my copium for the rugby is NZ would have been favourites in the 7's final and they've got a core of really good young players for the next olympic cycle McKeown's a massive one. In terms of saving the day it's probably the perfect event given the US-AUS swim rivalry. I'm also curious to see what the intent will be with the 4x200m relay. They could potentially have a very strong team on paper but I'm not expecting it given the timing of the 800m and 100m events.

The 800m just got even more interesting. Huge swim by McIntosh.

One of the most infuriating matches as an Australian supporter. - Captain gets himself sent off for a deserved red card. - South Africa score a try off a blatant forward pass and not to mention they got possession off a phantom knock on call when we had a prime attacking opportunity. - South Africa should have had a player sent at the end. - Longbottom plays no part and Toole shows why he should have been receiving a lot more minutes throughout the tournament. One consolation is if we were to lose to anyone then I would have picked South Africa.

Feel like Argentina were very unlucky that France didn't cop another sin bin but then again they only have themselves to blame for such a slow start and the decision to kick when they were a player up.

Germany far too good. We were extremely lucky it was only 3-0 as well. Could have been a lot more.

Fiji look like a completely different team compared to what we have seen during the SVNS season.

Unfortunately he had to withdraw due to injury.

Seems like Australia will be rejecting the mens quota. They announced Genevieve Janse van Rensburg for the womens but no male.

On paper it appears that way but they've been a completely different team when Longbottom plays. He has played four tournaments this year where they've finished 7th (knocked out by South Africa who won that tournament), 2nd, 2nd and 4th where he only played a few mins in the 3rd place match. In other words they could have very easily have medaled at three out of four events with him which is a pretty good strike rate. Longbottom was named in the team of the tournament on those three occasions as well so it's not like it was a coincidence that they played better when he was there. Australia also has Toole re-entering the SVNS system who was a standout and gives them the speed that they have been desperately needing in their backs. They've also got a couple of other Super Rugby players potentially joining. Unfortunately Lancaster was always down as re-entering the system which would be massive but it seems like the Wallabies will use him. But if he did then that is another major strike weapon that they haven't had outside of the Perth round. As I said though it depends on whether Longbottom is fit which seems very uncertain. Without him you can put a line through them but with him they're a completely different team and that's without the other new additions.