Two of the Venezuelan women's volleyball team could only watch on at the world grand prix tournament in Canberra on Sunday after a bizarre worldwide search started when the squad missed their matches.
A plane mishap left their coach and 12 of their teammates stranded in Brazil, but the pair arrived in Canberra on Saturday night with four team staff members and an official after taking a separate chartered flight to Lima, Peru and commercial flights via Santiago, Chile to Sydney.
Others in the squad took a different chartered flight to Sao Paulo but returned to Caracas when technical problems struck their plane and forced them to wait 10 hours, the Venezuelan embassy said.
Venezuelan charge d'affaires Daniel Gasparri-Rey said the stranded players were taking a chartered flight from Caracas to Canberra via several stops - including Sao Paulo, Cape Town and Perth - but came home when it grew clear they would miss the tournament.
Mr Gasparri-Rey flew to Perth expecting to meet them before learning of the cancellation and returning to Canberra.
The squad used chartered planes because a shortage of seats stopped them taking commercial flights to Australia, he said.
However Volleyball Australia president Craig Carracher said it was told of five different planes the team was meant to arrive on over three days.
"We don't know why their internal processes meant they couldn't be here," he said.
Volleyball Australia was disappointed and couldn't understand why the players could not take commercial flights, Mr Carracher said.
"Our own work identified they could have booked flights from Caracas and arrived here," he said.
"If there are other reasons for this delay, they are clearly reasons that frustrate the athletes and disappoint the Venezuelan athletes."
The team needed to be in Canberra on Wednesday, but was still training in Venezuela then despite the concerns of Volleyball Australia the squad wouldn't arrive on time, Mr Carracher said.
After finishing their 18,000km trip in Canberra on Saturday night, the players lacked the numbers to keep their tournament fixture against Australia's Volleyroos on Sunday and watched as the hosts lost the final to Hungary in three sets.
Mr Gasparri-Rey said the team learnt it was in the tournament the previous Sunday, and arranged visas and flights to arrive on Saturday before their matches.
Volleyball Australia officials spent 24 hours trying to locate the missing team on Saturday after being told they were to arrive in Canberra at 6am before playing in the tournament at the AIS Arena.
Canberra Airport had no knowledge of this flight nor its scheduled arrival time, causing confusion for organisers who had to cancel Venezuela's clash against the Volleyroos on Saturday.