Team Australia couldn't replicate their spectacular 2022 showing at the 2025 World Games, and much of that fell to the flaws in their resets
September 4, 2025 by Joseph Marmerstein in Analysis
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After a silver medal in the 2022 World Games and a solid performance at London Invite earlier this year, Australia was looking poised to challenge for another medal in the 2025 World Games. Instead, they stumbled, losing all three of their pool play games by a combined 14 points and finding themselves in the bottom bracket of the tournament. Looking at their overall stats, we can see that they struggled on both sides of the ball: through pool play, they created only eight break chances (worst at the tournament) and held only 55.6% of their offensive points (second worst, only beating the host nation, China). In this article, we’ll take a look at some of their offensive struggles and see what we can learn.
Reviewing many of Australia’s turnovers, two main patterns emerge. In some cases, these issues compound on each other, putting the Australian offense in uncomfortable situations where turnovers were more likely.
Issue 1:
Australia was willing to lose a lot of yards on their resets. On its own this can be OK (we have even seen teams lose yards as a focal point of their offense), but the key is to use that negative pass to change the angle and quickly gain yards back. Australia did a bad job of re-connecting their offense after losing those yards, meaning their downfield players were far away and the defense could front downfield cutters aggressively.
Issue 2:
Australia made a lot of slashing cuts across the face of the mark, both from behind and from in front of the disc. These cuts can be very powerful to create momentum and flow for the offense. However, the Crocs’ throwers weren’t willing to hit those windows consistently. Sometimes the timing of the cut was off, sometimes throwers were looking them off when they seemed open, and sometimes the windows were too tight, but they were often unable to hit these throws which put the offense in difficult situations.
In particular cases, these issues combined – negative resets leading to tough-angled cuts, which created high stall situations and led to turnovers. Below we’ll look through a few examples of this playing out.
Examples Where Australia Broke Down
Australia gets the disc on the sideline. There’s an early swing look for Rob Andrews that isn’t thrown, and then both the handler and front of stack make cuts attacking the breakside behind the mark, leading to a difficult inside throw that is a turn over.
Australia gets a great block right on their attacking endzone, setting up a short field and what should be an easy score. The camera cuts away here, but when it cuts back we can see two things – first, Andrews has just made an upline cut to the breakside that was not thrown to. Second, with all of Australia’s players in the end zone, France can easily surround their formation and stop easy options from developing. Alex Gan takes yet another difficult cross-field shot right as a potential swing cut is developing, and France gets the disc back.
Once again, Australia advances the disc up the field quickly. Andrews collects a negative reset, which gets them off the trap sideline and should be turned into a continuation, especially with the French defender briefly messing up the force. Alex Ladomatos hesitates on the cut though, and the throw ends up coming much later and doesn’t gain much advantage. Now with the disc on the far side, Australia’s offense is happy to allow Cat Phillips, Ladomatos, and Andrews to play 3v3, but they never threaten to attack the big space in the middle of the field, instead opting for a tight inside throw that gets blocked.
Andrews gets the disc on the sideline, and Colombia sets an aggressive trapping mark, denying the around to the dump space. Ladomotos continues his cut to the backfield, where his defender gives him a cushion, but Andrews rushes the throw and rockets it back toward their own end zone for a turnover.
As the disc swings to the far side, this should be a great opportunity for the Australian cutters to attack and take advantage of defenders potentially being out of position. Instead, they’re left with a long upline cut intended for Kya Wiya. While we can’t see the full picture downfield, the exaggerated spread spacing with a handler behind the line of scrimmage makes it clear that Wiya’s cut is the only show in town, and it gets poach blocked and ignites the counterattack for Colombia.
Here, we have yet another example where the Australian spacing has four players off the screen – seemingly waiting for the handlers to create an advantage and gain some field position, which does not happen. The cutters realize this and start to re-connect with the disc, and Andrews makes a deep cut, usually a good bet for the Aussie offense. Unfortunately for them, with the disconnect between the cutters and the disc, the spacing and timing of the cut is off, making it easy for Colombia to send multiple defenders and get the block.
Even this example is telling, as Andrews has ample space in the middle for a yardage gaining throw that would break Australia through Colombia’s poaching wall. Instead, the window closes and Andrews is forced to curl his cut back toward the thrower, negating the potential advantage.
Australia advances the disc quickly up the far side, but flow stops. They look to the reset, but Alex Prentice starts attacking upline, not providing an immediate option. Andrews instead looks cross-field, but the throw floats a bit too much (partly due to the need to throw it over the handler and their defender) and gets blocked.
Phillips has an open swing, but instead chooses the higher difficulty blade over the handler’s head, leading to a turnover.
Examples Where Australia Broke Through
Australia often found themselves in this pressure situation. Sometimes, they were able to work their way out of it, often by hitting one of those tougher throws upfield to get the disc into a better position for continuations. Here, after Jonathan Keyes swings the disc off the line and starts clearing upfield, Prentice hits him with a difficult leading pass which advances the disc and creates a large isolation space in the end zone with no help for the Colombian defender.
In this example from early in the tournament, we can see Australia effectively swinging the disc. On first resets, Gan pushes positive which ensures he doesn’t lose too many yards and improves throwing angles for the continuation cuts. On the second reset, Gan loses more yards, and the offense is at risk of being disconnected. Gan is able to break through, however, with a nice high release backhand to the inside lane. On the third reset one, Gan loses more yards, but is able to immediately gain them back, and the quick field change opens up the Australian goal.
On this possession, we can see some of the negative Australian habits, though they are able to move through them and keep advancing the disc up the field. First Gan makes a reset cut which loses ~10 yards, and looks off the continuation swing. The Australian stack is now disconnected from the disc, though they are able to hit Phillips on a nice cut. Again, Gan defaults to cutting backwards and ends up in an awkward position, but Australia are bailed out by a swing cut from Sam McGuckin. In the end, Wiya looks for another cross-field shot which seems open, but perhaps fearing the throw coming out too floaty like two previous attempts by her teammates, she leaves it short.
After a negative reset, the Australians are once again disconnected from the disc. Both Prentice and McGuckin cut for the break throw up the sideline, but McGuckin is able to get enough separation to get thrown to (had he not been thrown to here, the Crocs would have been in trouble). After another negative reset, we finally see Australia convert the yardage loss into a swing, gaining back the yards with a long give-go. McGuckin is clearly frustrated here, motioning for the cutters to move shallower to provide better options, and unfortunately misses a potential window to hit a handler for power position in the process. Eventually, Australia is able to break through with the hold on a lightly pressured hammer catch by Prentice.
Finally we have one of Australia’s cleanest possessions, as the team moves the disc laterally well. They hit Phillips early in the point with the inside break on the slashing cut. Later in the point, she makes a similar cut and continues it deep; the quickly changing angles of the disc, and better spacing from the Australian cutters, give her plenty of deep space to catch the easy goal.
Conclusions
Compared to the 2022 World Games squad, there is an important player missing: Tom Tullet (aka “Cupcake”), who led the team in throwing yards, assist, and touches in the last cycle. Tullet’s absence may have been felt even more than just his stats, however: as we’ve seen in this article, many of Australia’s offensive struggles seemed to stem from the reset space, where an anchor like Tullet, who could get open consistently and threaten both deep and break space as a thrower, may have been a difference maker.
