Australia have fallen agonisingly short of a medal in the men's gymnastics team's event at the Commonwealth Games, with the hosts dominating in Birmingham.
The English team of Joe Fraser, James Hall, Jake Jarman, Giarnni Regini-Moran and Courtney Tulloch dominated from the outset in front of a full house at Arena Birmingham to deliver the perfect start to a highly anticipated local gymnastics campaign.
The star of the show was undoubtedly Birmingham local Fraser, who was greeted with raucous applause from his home crowd - cheers that only amplified as he delivered a star turn.
The Australian contingent of Clay Mason Stephens, Tyson Bull, Jesse Moore, James Bacueti and Mitchell Morgans finished fourth by just 0.650 points, recording 239.000 on Friday night.
A slow start in the rings proved costly but the Australians were just 0.200 behind third-placed Cyprus heading into both teams' final event, the pommel horse.
Australia had to score 38.100 to overtake Cyprus but fell just short, extending the men's team medal drought to 12 years.
"You can pick that (deficit) up from any one routine out of the 18 routines that are counted," Mason Stephens said.
"We're all in this together. We worked really hard on the prep and obviously we did a great job out there on most of the events (with) a couple of mistakes really from all of us.
"So there's things to grow on but I'm super-proud of the guys ... unfortunately we couldn't pull it through for the medal but we've got a lot of competition yet to come."
The Australians sat seventh after Moore, Mason Stephens and Morgans competed in the rings.
But they recovered strongly in the vault to leap into fifth on the standings, and were fourth after the parallel bars.
They remained fourth after the horizontal bar where Bull stumbled on the dismount in his pet event, costing himself a top score and a spot in the individual final.
The 29-year-old lamented an ankle injury in the lead-up that limited his dismounts in practice.
"As bad as an ankle injury is, there's no excuses. I didn't have the legs in me and that's the way it goes sometimes," Bull told reporters.
"It limited me but I'd still back myself in to land that dismount."
Moore and Mason Stephens both made the all-around final.
Teen sensation Moore will compete in the pommel horse, rings and horizontal bar and Morgans made both the parallel and horizontal bar finals.
Mason Stephens qualified in the floor while Bull only made the parallel rings final, with Bacueti qualifying for the vault final.
