Greece bombed out of the water polo championships in Melboourne when they were beaten 8-3 in the quarter-finals by Serbia, arguably the leading side in the world.

Serbia now go into the semi-finals while Greece go forward to the 5-8th place play-offs.

The Greeks, however, made it tough for the Serbs and were level at 2-2 at half-time before crumbling in the third and fourth quarters. It wasn't until midway through the first quarter that Sapic opened the scoring for Serbia with his 12th goal of the tournament. Immediately after Chatzitheodorou levelled on extra. In the dying seconds of the period, Sapic drew a major foul and planted the ball into goal for 2-1.

Mazis was rewarded for a lot of hard Greek work when he converted extra at 4:14, the only goal of the second quarter. In the third quarter, however, the Serbians began to flex their muscles with goals from Filipovic, Vujasinovic and Ikodinovic making it 5-2 going into the final quarter.

Filipovic and Nikic, with a bakhander from two metres, made it 7-2. Vlontakis pulled one back for Greece before Udovicic finished off the scoring with just 21 seconds remaining on the clock.

Quarters: 2-1, 0-1, 3-0, 3-1

Teams:

SERBIA: Denes SEFIK, Andrea PRLAINOVIC, Zivko GOCIC, Vanja UDOVICIC (1), Dejan SAVIC, Danilo IKODINOVIC (1), Slobodan NIKIC (1), Filip FILIPOVIC (2), Aleksandar CIRIC, Aleksandar SAPIC (2), Vladimir VUJASINOVIC (1), Milos KOROLIJA, Slobodan SORO. Head Coach: Dejan UDOVICIC.

GREECE: Nikolaos DELIGIANNIS, Anastasios SCHIZAS, Dimitros MAZIS (1), Stefanos SANTA, Theodoros CHATZITHEODOROU (1), Konstantinos KOKKINAKIS, Christos AFROUDAKIS, Georgios NTOSKAS, Georgios AFROUDAKIS, Dimitios MITELOUDIS, Antonios VLONTAKIS (1), Emmanouil MYLONAKIS, Georgios REPPAS.?Head Coach: Alessandro CAMPAGNA.??

Referees: Erhan TULGA (TUR), Gaetan TURCOTTE (CAN)