AUSTRALIA FINALISES OLYMPIC BASEBALL TEAM
Australian Baseball officials and coaches today named their final roster for the 2000 Olympic Games while in their final days at camp at Sanctuary Cove on Queensland's Gold Coast.
With the call up of players to the Major Leagues and the withdrawal of others due to injury, the Australian Head Coach, Jon Deeble, has used the first week of camp to consider several players for the available positions.
"We wanted to use this first week as a monitoring week. A number of players were vying for the remaining positions and we wanted to give them all a chance to play in some practice games," explained Deeble.
Wile Victorian David White was added to the roster in place of the injured John Stephens and the Central Coast's Craig Anderson brought in to fill the gap left by Jeff Williams, the coaching staff still needed to fill the void left by the call up of Cameron Cairncross and Luke Prokopec. Western Australia's Mark Ettles and Victoria's Michael Nakamura have now been included on the roster to round out the Aussies pitching line up.
The ten pitchers named in the Australian Team include South Australians Tom Becker, Shayne Bennett, and Mark Hutton, New South Walesmen Anderson, Grant Balfour and Brad Thomas, Victorians Nakamura and David White, Queenslander Adrian Meagher and West Australian Ettles.
Making up the three catching positions are Queensland's David Nilsson, West Australian Michael Moyle and New South Wales' Gary White. These players will be joined by a predominantly Queensland infield of Mat Buckley, Paul Gonzalez, Ron Johnson and Brett Roneberg with New South Wales' Rodney Van Buizen and Glenn Williams also securing infield positions.
Rounding out the 24 man Australian roster are outfielders and utility players comprising Adam Burton (Vic), Clayton Byrne (WA), Grant McDonald (Qld), Glenn Reeves (Vic) and Chris Snelling (NSW).
NSW's Brendan Kingman is on reserve, as well as the Gold Coast's Peter Vogler and Canberra's Phil Brassington who both remain with the australian squad in camp before the Olympics as reserves and will participate in the remaining two Pre-Olympic tournament games against South Africa (tonight, 6:30pm at Redlands) and Italy (Tuesday, 12th September, 2pm at Redlands).
The Australian Baseball Team will travel to Sydney on Wednesday, 13th September and begin their Olympic campaign on Sunday, 17th September in game one against the Netherlands at Sydney Olympic Park commencing at 7:30pm.