Nuss and Kloth beat the Aussies for the bronze at the 2023 World Championships and have been playing well leading into the Games. The Aussies were ranked 12th coming into Paris.

Taliqua and Mariafe were able to trade blows with the US pair, and had their usual points of brilliance, but they couldn’t string enough of them together to seize the momentum.

The Americans played well to force errors from the Australians, and take the match 2-0 (21-16 21-16).

“We knew it was going to be a tough game,” Mariafe said. ‘We always have really close games against those girls and they're a great team.” 

While disappointed with their performance, there was definitely no panic and they know their best form isn’t far away.

“It just wasn't our game tonight and they came hard at us. But we still have another chance to come back and find our best form,” Taliqua said.

“We probably didn't find our flow like you need to against the top teams. But we just take the lessons and recover and move forward. We know that we can play better and it's good to know that it's in our control.”

The Aussies won their opening match against the ninth seeded Chinese (Xiu/Zia) 2-1 (22-20 14-21 16-14) in a tight 56 minute contest. And their next match is against Canada (Bansley/Bukovec), who have lost their opening two matches.

“We've got a couple of days off, so there is time to recover and get prepared for our next match,” Taliqua said.

“We've never played them (Canadians) before but we've known them on Tour and they’re getting better and better which is absolutely amazing but it also makes our job harder. 

“It's another fight that we're ready for. But that's just the beauty of the sport. Everything changes from one Olympic cycle to the next. It's actually really exciting having so many great teams and the next generation of teams coming through.”

Aussie men suffer frustrating loss to tough Italians

Earlier on Monday in Paris, Australian men’s team Mark Nicolaidis and Izac Carracher pushed the ninth seeded Italian pair, Samuele Cottafava/Paolo Nicolai all the way in two tight sets, going down 21-19 21-18. 

The Australian pair created opportunities early in the second set and again later on but weren’t able to capitalise and push it to a third set.

“Honestly, that one really stings,” Mark said. “We obviously don't come here to get close, we come here to win. When we're that close and we didn't bring our best, that's when it hurts a lot. So it's hard to be pleased after a game like that.”

Izac was frustrated with not executing their best performance.

“We pride ourselves on our ball control and today we really struggled with the pass, and then we struggled a little bit on bettering the second contact and that's kind of something that's a staple of our game,” he said.

“So it's a little bit frustrating for us to know that we can produce a lot better than that and not quite get there today. Obviously it's a big stage, it's a big environment, we're stoked to be out there but it's just a little bit disappointing to not quite reach the potential we know we have.”

The Australians were looking to bounce back after a tough round one loss to world number one Sweden. They now regroup for their match against Qatar on Thursday.

“It's a must-win for us. We can't really control what happens with Sweden versus Italy; that will dictate a fair bit for our pool but if we beat Qatar we're in the mix,” Izac said.

“We know they're a great team and we know they can produce a lot but we also know that we're a lot better than what we produced today and a lot better than what we produced in our first game as well so I think we can come out firing and hopefully we can get the win.”

Set to start Olympic campaign

The Australian duo, Thomas Hodges and Zachery Schubert, will play their first Olympic match against Poland at the spectacular Eiffel Tower Stadium at 5pm on Tuesday 20 July.

The young Aussies play the 10th ranked Polish team, who they have never played before, to commence their Olympic campaign.

Andrew Reid