by Alex Hoad at the Basketball Arena

There will be no Paralympic medal for Steve Brown and the GB wheelchair rugby side after they suffered a 51-39 defeat against Japan on Friday afternoon.

GB needed to win to progress along with the USA to the semi-final stage but after a bright opening, things began to fall apart for GB in the second quarter and despite battling to the very end, they were left facing a fight for fifth place - their world ranking - in the classification tournament.

GB began with speedsters David Anthony and Aaron Phipps in the line-up and the gameplan seemed to be to blast away early and get a lead to protect against a deep opponent.

However despite leading 14-13 at the end of the first, a disastrous second, which they lost 13-4 left them facing an uphill struggle for the rest of the game.

Turnovers proved costly for the hosts, while they were also unlucky with several decisions and didn't get the required run of the ball on other occasions.

A downhearted Brown, 31, from Sittingbourne, said: “We had a game plan. We know what we wanted to execute.

“We knew that they were going to come out strongly. They have a lot of depth to their team and they can make a lot of tactical substitutions which they made there and it worked for them.

"We had to come out and match them from the start, we went with pace, but in the second quarter it was quite tricky.

“The bounce of the ball sometimes goes in your favour and sometimes against you.

“There were so many times in that second quarter when the ball came off the front of the chair or it hits a wheel and went off court.

“Tactically it was no problems. They had a lot of luck, it wasn’t unforced errors. Four wrong bounces is a score-change of eight points and that’s what happened."

He added: “The effort that went right up until the final whistle was phenomenal.

“Against all odds, against the run of the ball, when it was all stacked against you, to have so many players pushing for each other and the coach and the fans... it’s a position I’d want to be in again."

Brown has called on his side - which includes Kent Crusaders stars Kylie Grimes, Andy Barrow and Bulbul Hussain - to refocus for tomorrow morning's first classification game, with the winner going into tomorrow night's play-off for 5th and 6th place.

He said: "We have to put what's happened behind us. Sport is about moving forward, you can't just think, 'ah well, we lost a couple of games so we may as well give up.’

“It doesn't matter what happened before, we have a set game plan for each team and we'll be looking to win the rest of our games.

"We have drawn the positives from what's happened so far. I’ve got complete faith in the coach and the team around me.

"Our ranking’s fifth and that’s what we hope to achieve.”