D'Arcy faded badly in his heat and finished fourth, failing to qualify for the final in the event he entered as the No.1 ranked swimmer in the Commonwealth.

D'Arcy's spectacular wipeout on the first morning of competition at the Commonwealth Games has given the Australian swim team a huge wake-up call for the rest of the meet: be on your game or be off.

Team leader Eamon Sullivan watched the race from the village and - like many others - couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

It made him more determined to win the 4x100 metres relay which Australia did - narrowly - last night.

"After a bit of a shock with D'Arcy missing the final I wanted to come out and produce the goods and set the tone for the rest of the meet for the guys," he said.

"It shook up everyone. For the rest of the team it just shows that anything can happen, you've got to be on the game heats and finals for the rest of the meet."

Petria Thomas, former champion swimmer and now an athlete liaison officer, said D'Arcy's defeat provided "a good wake-up call".

"It's a Commonwealth Games. You can't mess around in the heats. I always find it disappointing when some of our good swimmers don't go as hard as they should in the heats," she said.

"It's a hard lesson to learn but hopefully it will stand Nick in good stead for the future and he'll know he's got to get up and perform. It's a good lesson, not only for Nick but the whole team."

Sullivan, who said he'd like to forget "most of this year", was thrilled with his own swim which lifted Australia into the lead after Simon Burnett had gotten England off to a flying start.

"It definitely gives me a bit of confidence going into my individuals knowing I've got that sort of form behind me."

Ultimately the relay came down to a stirring battle between James Magnussen and England's Adam Brown, with South Africa third.

Magnussen, swimming in his first Commonwealth Games, expected the race would come down to his leg when he saw the way England set off.

"I just stayed relaxed and let the Pom turn first and then chased him down in the second 50," he said.

"My coach and I talk about it a lot: I'm not a front-end swimmer. When I saw the two guys in front of me my eyes lit up and I thought 'this is what you train for' and I put my head down and went for it."

D'Arcy had been desperate to get the meet off to a bright start for Australia, relishing the opportunity to swim on the first day and set the tone. But certainly not this tone.

His coach, Brian Stehr, was concerned that the dual preparation - D'Arcy like all the Australians raced in the Pan Pacs in California in August - may have harmed his charge.

''The only thing that's coming to mind now is that the transition from Pan Pacs to this has been just too long for him to stay up,'' he said. ''He was certainly ready to race there and it's always a challenge to move into another major meet.

''Actually, closer is better than five or six weeks. Two or three weeks would have been good.''

In the women's 200m freestyle Australians Blair Evans and Kylie Palmer qualified as the fastest pair but Bronte Barratt, who entered the Games ranked second-fastest in the Commonwealth in the event, missed out on a berth in the final when she was unable to break the two-minute mark.

The other big disappointment of the day was in the men's 400m freestyle, where Australia's declining distance stocks were confirmed. Australia had only two swimmers and one of them, Wollongong's Rob Hurley, was quickly dispatched, swimming 10 seconds outside his best to come fifth in his heat in 3:57.46. Canadian Ryan Cochrane and the Scot Robbie Renwick were both impressive, while Australian Ryan Napoleon swam strongly to win his heat and qualify third-fastest for the final.

Stehr said D'Arcy was ''just a shadow of his former self. We've all seen how he races and we just didn't see that today''.

His instructions had been to ''take the high ground, to go into the final with the fastest time … On paper he should be able to do that quite easily,'' Stehr said.

But D'Arcy's training had been inconsistent and his confidence was down. ''We had some moments of brilliance but it wasn't consistently good,'' Stehr said.

''Obviously my job is to keep him positive, so I kept reassuring him he's a good racer and he'd do what was necessary on the day. Unfortunately, he couldn't do that.

''He might want to go home. It's a pretty big disappointment for him. Coming into the meet as the second-fastest swimmer in the world, top-ranked in the Commonwealth, to miss the final, how would you feel?''

D'Arcy's much-documented dramas out of the pool - he was kicked off the Beijing Olympics team after assaulting former swimmer Simon Cowley - had undoubtedly affected him, Stehr said.

''I don't doubt that for a minute. Everything that has happened has put Nick in a position where he has a point to prove now. He missed the Olympics and then the world championships in Rome, and really hasn't had a major competition apart from the Pan Pacs five or six weeks ago where he swam very well, almost up to our expectations. There's an awful lot of pressure on him.

''His demeanour before the race was much more introverted … The look on his face was one of focus, which probably wasn't a good one for him in retrospect. He needed to just chill out a little bit … ''