Pool A: Australia - Brazil (28 June)
Head-to-Head
· Brazil beat Australia 3-1 in Sydney on Saturday to record their seventh victory this World League season.
· Brazil won all three encounters with Australia this World League season, 3-1, 3-0 and 3-1. These were also the first three encounters between these teams in the competition.
· Yesterday, Australia's Thomas Edgar emerged as the top scorer of the match scoring 21 points. Edgar is the first player to score over 20 points in a WL match against Brazil this season. Serbia's Aleksandar Atanasijevic has scored 20 points against Brazil twice this season.
· Edgar had scored 27 points against Brazil in the two previous matches combined.
· Brazil are also unbeaten against Australia in four matches at Olympic Games, world championships and world cup, conceding only one set.
Australia
· As a result of their defeat against Brazil, Australia are now knocked out of contention for the Final Six. They finished joint-fifth last season and 10th on debut in 1999.
· Australia have now lost ten of their last 11 in the World League, the exception being the 3-0 victory against Italy on 12 June.
· Australia have won all four of their World League matches taking place in Sydney of last year's campaign.
· Thomas Edgar is Australia top scoring player with 132 points from only 7 matches. With an average of 18.86 points per match Edgar is only trailing Poland's Bartosz Kurek (19.44) in terms of points per match average.
Brazil
· Brazil lead Pool A by two victories over Serbia. Brazil are already certain of the Final Six as hosts of the event in Rio de Janeiro that starts on 15 July.
· Brazil have always finished in the top six in the World League, in 25 previous participations.
· Brazil have split their last two series (vs Serbia and Italy) after winning four matches on the trot in the World League (vs Serbia and Australia).
· Brazil have avoided a straight sets defeat in their last 19 World League matches.