London: They came in droves hoping against hope that the Indian hockey team would give them something to cheer about. However, for the Indian fans at the Riverbank Stadium on Saturday, it was once again that sinking feeling. The feeling of being lost in the abyss… The feeling of despondency.

Indian hockey plunged into darkness under a clear blue sky as they finished last in the 12-team competition, their worst-ever show at the Olympics. In the classification match, South Africa defeated the eight-time Olympic winners 3-2. And you thought we were expected to be in the semis!

India thus ended their campaign losing all their six matches. They conceded 21 goals and could score only eight. It was India’s poorest performance in Olympics after 1996 Atlanta, where they finished eighth.

As usual, the team management was scurrying for cover after the match. Chief coach Michael Nobbs, who had been lambasting the players for the past few days, was seen rushing past the newsmen in the mixed zone and did not turn up for the mandatory press conference for the second consecutive day.

Coach Mohammed Riaz did come to meet the media though he had nothing new to say. The only thing he confirmed was that none in the team management was willing to resign. “We have no such plan as of now… It will be decided only after we go back to India. We will sit down and analyse what went wrong.”

So what went wrong? Everything. India had defeated South Africa several times in the last one year, but on Saturday, they looked a beaten lot from the beginning.

They were in the arrears in the eighth minute itself when Andrew Cronje made the most of a counter attack. Six minutes later, India equalised when Sandeep Singh struck cleanly from a penalty corner. But that was all India could do for the rest of the 55 minutes.

They did create some good chances, especially in the second session but all of them were wasted by the forwards. While Sardara Singh and Ignace Tirkey kept on making inroads, the strikers repeatedly messed up at the goalmouth. South Africa goalkeeper Erasmus Pieterse also made a few good saves.

South Africans took the lead again a minute before the breather through Timothy Drummond. Lloyd Norris Jones made it 3-1 in the 65th minute while Dharamvir Singh pulled one back a minute later.

India’s midfielder Manpreet Singh suffered a head injury in the third minute of the play when he was accidentally hit by the stick of a rival player. He had to be taken out on a stretcher. Manpreet, however, returned to the pitch with a heavily bandaged head in the second half.

“When we came here, we had high hopes… But we are now returning home with a low morale,” said skipper Bharat Chetri. “We had good preparations and played against good teams for the past one year. Perhaps, we couldn’t judge the standard of the other teams in the Olympics,” he said.

Meanwhile, world champions Australia had to be content with the bronze medal in the men’s competition after defeating hosts Great Britain 3-1.

Beaten by defending champions Germany in the semi-finals that dashed their hopes of reclaiming the title they won in 2004, Australia relied on two second-half goals to thwart Great Britain’s challenge.

Great Britain recovered from their humiliating 2-9 loss to The Netherlands on Thursday to put up a good show against Australia.

Australia took the lead in the 17th minute through a field goal from Simon Orchard, but Great Britain were back on level terms through a penalty corner conversion by Iain Levers.Australia again surged ahead 13 minutes into the second session when Jamie Dwyer shot home during a penalty corner, and Kieran Govers rounded it off in the 57th minute.