New Zealand beach volleyball's decision to split its top men's pairing for the Oceania zone Olympic qualifying tournament at Mt Maunganui will be given a serious re-think after both teams were dominated by Australia.
Mt Maunganui's Kirk Pitman and Jason Lochhead, a mainstay on the world tour for almost nine years, separated and played with Tauranga siblings Sam and Ben O'Dea during the three-day Oceania qualifier.
New Zealand still qualified its men's and women's teams to June's Asian Confederation Continental Cup in China, where the winning nation will grab one of the last spots for the London Olympics, but the experiment of splitting Pitman and Lochhead, ranked 33rd in the world, in a bid to put out two comparably strong teams for the Davis Cup-style tournament (two singles matches, two reverse singles then a golden set to 15 points in the event of a 2-2 tie) could be over.
Ben O' Dea during a match against Australia at the AVC Continental Cup, Mount Maunganui. Photo: Joel Ford.
After easily seeing off Fiji 4-0 in the semifinal, a result which qualified them for the top three and through to the Continental Cup, New Zealand men were on Saturday well beaten by Australia's top two pairings Chris McHugh/Josh Slack and Sam Boehm/Isaac Kapa.
Tauranga's Mike Dudson, Volleyball NZ's high performance elite beach manager, conceded a continuation of the weekend's combinations wasn't a certainty at the sudden-death Asian Confederation Continental Cup in June.
Pitman, in particular, was gutted to lose twice to Australian combinations they dominated on the world tour. He and Lochhead get a vote on which combinations to take into the China event, and after missing Olympic qualification twice before, Pitman is unlikely to back any move to weaken the Kiwi No 1's chances of playing at the Olympics in London.
Dudson said a lot of thought had gone into splitting the top combination, putting each with an O'Dea brother so in theory the combinations would be similar. They would review that decision in light of the weekend's performance.
"There's definitely been some progress made in the last five weeks, and as much as we're gutted today to lose to Australia on our home beach [against] teams we'd been beating with Jason and Kirk [together], we have gained a lot by splitting the partnership.
"There was a lot of discussion and a lot of pros and cons... June is the key time for the New Zealand team."
The flipside of New Zealand's strategy to create more of an equilibrium across the two teams would have been to keep the Lochhead/Pitman combo intact and continue to play the O'Dea brothers as a duo - in effect making a clear Kiwi No 1 and 2. Maintaining the status quo would again be a consideration leading into the next event.
"This week was about getting there. Of course we want to win and we haven't made any decision yet about the make-up of the teams we'll put out - everything is up for negotiation.
"Jason and Kirk will be the highest-ranked team [in China] although there could be a couple of results before then that change that, but you'd have to say splitting them up has been great for the development of Ben and Sam's game. They got to train against the world champion Germans and that wouldn't have happened if they'd been playing by themselves."
Ben, 19, said he backed their ability to qualify Pitman and Lochhead for London, despite the weekend whitewash by the Australians.
"There were a couple of rough calls out there today and Kirk and I didn't have such a good game this morning [against Boehm and Kapa] but we were in a good position to take it. We're still a good chance of getting a team to the Olympics despite what happened."
The O'Deas qualified by winning their Oceania sub-zonal tournament in Samoa last year, with the change in partnership mooted after that. He and his 21-year-old sibling welcomed the switch because they often clashed on the court.
"When we get along we play some good ball - but that's only when we get along. That's slowly been getting less often so it's been good to have a break and play with someone else. Maybe now we'll learn to treat each other better and respect each other more."
New Zealand's women's team lost 4-0 to Vanuatu in their semifinal but beat Samoa 4-0 to clinch third, while Vanuatu took a game off Aussie in the women's final before going down 3-1.