An ankle injury to Jock Landale has soured Australia’s impressive 88-67 victory over South Sudan at Rod Laver Arena last night.

Landale, who is the Boomers’ primary choice for the centre position, is now expected to miss the entirety of the FIBA World Cup.

This puts a dampener on an otherwise stellar bounce-back win after their 4-point loss to Brazil just 24 hours beforehand.

The Boomers have flown to Japan for the World Cup this morning.

Australian head coach Brian Goorjian has told the media that Landale would not be on the flight.

“Telling the truth here – he is not getting on the plane with us, he will be getting an MRI tomorrow,” he said.

Despite a rocky start in Melbourne last night, which saw Australia fall behind 11-4 in the opening minutes, the Boomers showed their trademark grit to produce a 30-2 run to overwhelm South Sudan.

Matisse Thybulle and Duop Reath led the scoring for the home nation by scoring 17 and 16 points respectively.

New Oklahoma City signee, Jack White, was expected to be the final cut of the Boomers squad and now he is being relied upon to fill the hole that the injured Landale leaves behind.

Coach Goorjian said he is thankful that the versatile forward is available for their quest for gold.

“He has played in all of our games and we went down the road that we went on as he is a very helpful piece,” he said. “He is multipurpose and if we are going to play that small ball, switch [style of game] then he is another important piece.”

Australia head to Japan for two more practice games, playing France and Georgia.

The Boomers begin their World Cup campaign in Okinawa against Finland on Friday, August 25.

Photo: basketball goal by Hobbies on a Budget is available HERE and used under a Creative Commons licence. The image has not been modified.