GWENT squash stars Alex Gough and David Evans, pictured, are confident they can come up trumps in the men's doubles at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, writes Peter Shuttleworth.

And Newport-born Gough has revealed the Welsh pair have a score to settle with the old enemy - the English.

"The English made a point of not practising with us to try and lessen our medal chances here," said the 31-year-old.

"That is a bit frustrating, so that's gone in the back pocket until later on in the tournament. We'll be hoping to get some revenge," smiled Gough.

The Gwent duo, who are seeded fifth, are up against Pakistan pair Shamsul Islam Khan and Shahid Zaman Khan plus Papua New Guinea pair Damien Tam and Derek Hunter in Pool E of their competition.

At the Kuala Lumpur Games in 1998, the Welshmen were knocked out in the quarter-finals by the eventual gold medalists England's Paul Johnson and Mark Chaloner, who are much-fancied this time too along with fellow countrymen Peter Nicol and Lee Beachill, the latter being the man that knocked Evans out of the singles Speaking ahead of the doubles event starting tomorrow, Pontypool-born Evans said: "We've got a very good chance.

"I'm not trying to put a curse on it, but I think we've got a good group and we have beaten a few of the top seeds so hopefully we can do the business again."

Gough and Evans both lost in the last 16 of the singles event, going down to No 3 seed David Palmer of Australia and England's No 8 seed Beachill respectively.

"We need to re-group after the singles disappointment," said Evans.

"But Alex would agree, we will be very disappointed if we don't come away with a medal. "We have played the top seeds before and beaten a few of them so there's no reason why can't finish on the podium."

Gough and Evans are both in agreement that they haven't practised against high-class opposition lately but they still remain buoyant.

"It is frustrating not being able to play against other quality doubles pairs," said Evans. "I'm not being disrespectful to the other Welsh players, but we can beat them quite comfortably. And a lot of the other teams won't practice with us for obvious reasons."

And Gough added: "The Australians have got a big camp and they can play amongst themselves because they are all at the same high level. The English are the same.

"But the Welsh have only got a small team. We need good players to play against.

"We both know what we are doing and are quite confident on how we want to play it. Now it's just a case of doing it well enough because the top four seeds will all be very tough."