Express & Star

Round-up: Heart break for Walsall's Niall Farrell and judokas, but Wolverhampton's Nick Bandurak nets double

Sam Hall beat himself up at losing Commonwealth gold to domestic rival Ashley McKenzie.

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The highly-rated Walsall-based 21-year-old came into the men’s 60kg competition as one of the top seeds and favourites having won Grand Prix gold and Grand Slam bronze in the last year.

Hall breezed through rounds, beating Nauru’s Isamaela Solomon with two waza’ari throws inside a minute and then dispatching Welshman Daniel Rabbitt in a mere 18 seconds.

He also had far too much for Cypriot Petros Christodoulides that secured at least a silver medal and a much-anticipated all-English final with McKenzie.

But 33-year-old McKenzie was able to dictate the gold medal bout and won with two waza’ari throws in quick time to seal gold with Hall left to settle for silver.

Hall said: “I’m disappointed. I felt I could have given more.

“That’s the way judo goes, if everything’s right, it goes your way. Something wasn’t right, so I need to go back, look at it and see where I go from here.

“I’ll look back on this, reflect and move on to something at the end of the year.”

Elsewhere, fellow Black Country star Acelya Toprak suffered similar gold medal heartbreak as she went down against Canadian Christa Deguchi in the 57kg final.

Toprak, 24, toppled Mauritian Christianne Legentil in the semi-finals to guarantee herself a medal but was unable to go all the way in front of a buoyant Coventry crowd.

Toprak said: “I’m happy – a silver is always a little bit of a kick in the teeth as you want the gold.

“But the experience is amazing and something that I’m going to remember of the rest of my life.

“The crowd definitely spurred me on – there were people shouting my name and it was amazing to hear familiar voices.

“I’m going to look back at my fights, work on the things I need to work on and make sure I’m ready to take gold next time.”

Walsall boxer Niall Farrell – one of the favourites for gold in the featherweight division – suffered a shock first-round defeat to Northern Ireland's Jude Gallagher.

And the 24-year-old was devastated: “I’m absolutely wounded and gutted. This is my hometown. To go out like that leaves me totally gutted. The referee stopped it too early. I got caught by a big shot but I was fine and ready to carry on. I can’t believe it got stopped.”

Wolverhampton’s Nick Bandurak scored the final two goals to earn England's men hockey players a 4-4 draw against India from 4-1 down.

He said: “Once the emotion dies down and we can reflect coldly on it, we should never have found ourselves in that deficit.

“India were ruthless and clinical and we just weren’t getting that final connection in the circle.

“Sport’s funny, isn’t it? As soon as the second half started to roll, the crowd got behind us, we got extra energy, things started to happen in the 23m and happened for us. A few more minutes and I believe it could have gone in our favour.”

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