LAURA Massaro saw her last realistic shot at Commonwealth Games gold go up in smoke on Saturday before missing out on bronze 24 hours later, but the East Lancashire squash star insists she is not finished yet.

Massaro and Sarah-Jane Perry fell in the semi-finals and on Sunday went down to home duo Rachael Grinham and Donna Urquhart 11-6, 11-8 in the bronze-medal match.

That means Massaro goes home empty-handed from these Games after her quarter-final defeat in the singles.

Her elusive quest for a gold medal seems destined to go unfulfilled, with Massaro now 34, but she insists she still has more to give over the next two years, if not until Birmingham in 2022.

She said: “I wanted more than anything to go away with a singles medal and was so disappointed with that.

“It’s been disappointing from my point of view overall. I’ve got three silvers and when the gold was out of the window, you want the bronze but it was never going to top the silvers that I’ve got.

“I’m really proud of my career so far. Obviously I wanted more from these Games but there’s still plenty for me to play for, I’m not done yet. I’ve still got at least another season or two in me and I think I can win major titles. So it’s back to the drawing board in the singles to find ways to improve.”

Massaro and Perry will both turn their attentions to the prestigious El Gouna tournament in Egypt next.

But after the doubles defeat, Massaro admitted that her focus on the singles competition probably hurt her chances alongside Perry, even if there were no regrets about that approach.

She added: “It’s simply come down to not really being able to put enough time towards the doubles.

"My training was geared towards the singles. You have faith that if your singles training is good enough, then the doubles will be as well. It’s not a complete neglect of the doubles but we play tournaments before this and straight after and that’s singles so you can’t put everything on hold while you are playing the doubles. It’s finding a balance.

“We’ve made a good start when we’ve been fresh and our body language has been open but then over the course of the game people change their tactics and we’ve maybe been a little slow to react to that.

“We gave it what we had this week. We came in seeded seven and we finished fourth. I know we wanted more than that but if we’re honest we haven’t quite clicked the way we wanted to. For a lot of it, it felt like we were right on the verge of it coming together but it hasn’t quite happened.”

Lancashire Telegraph:

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