The American women, the Rio 2016 Olympic champions, avenged their first round defeat to Australia with a convincing 10-7 win in the International Swimming Federation event.

In the men's final the US won 9-6 at the Sir Owen G. Glenn National Aquatic Centre in the New Zealand city.

The women took a 4-0 lead but Australia pulled back to lead 5-3 at half-time.

Some sharp advice from head coach Adam Krikorian brought the US players out again in a different frame of mind, however.

They scored four more goals without answer before one Australian effort made it 7-6.

In a final quarter that saw Australia's Elle Armit dismissed for misconduct, the US team scored three and conceded one to run out relatively comfortable winners.

"We finally got a good start but individual errors cost us and we ran out of gas a bit at the end," said Australia's captain Zoe Arancini.

"I'm pretty gutted."

Melissa Seidemann, the US captain, added: "It's always a tough game and we didn't start the way we'd wanted to and got ripped at half time by our coach.

"He told us they were playing better than us.

"It wasn't so much the two goal difference it was the physical presence, the lack of effort, we weren't getting blocks on in defence.

"It's all the little things that go into a game and it's pleasing we were able to turn that around."

Canada beat China 9-8 to win the bronze medal and Japan, who finished fifth with an 11-9 win against Kazakhstan, will go to the World League final because China are the hosts.

Japan won bronze in the men's competition with a 12-7 win over Kazakhstan.

Canada claimed fifth place with a 12-6 win over the hosts, New Zealand, and seventh place went to Argentina, 6-5 winners over China.