GREENWELL Point's Tim Atherton and his Australian men's baseball team finished sixth at its first-ever Premier12 tournament after falling to Chinese Taipei at the Tokyo Dome in their final super round game on Saturday afternoon.
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Chinese Taipei scored four runs in the bottom of the eighth to prevail 5-1 and deny Australia a spot in tomorrow's bronze medal game against Mexico.
As a result, the United States, and not Australia, took on Mexico for Premier12 bronze and a spot in next year's Olympics - with the latter winning 3-2.
"There's a lot of disappointment about the result of the game" Australian manager David Nilsson said to Baseball Australia.
"There's a lot of emotions about some of the results but I think we've been in every game and at some stage of every game we've had an opportunity to win.
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"As we continue to improve as a team I think our results will improve as well.
"(But) I'm really proud of the way Team Australia played."
Australia was competing at its first Premier12 tournament after ranking outside the world's top-12 nations for the inaugural tournament in 2015.
Australia will have another chance to qualify for the 2020 Olympics next year.
They will have to win the Oceania Championship and the six-team last-chance qualifier in Taiwan next April.
