Manchester badminton star delivers vow after crashing out of YONEX All England Championships in Birmingham

Manchester’s Greg Mairs has vowed to pick himself and partner Jenny Mairs back up after a tough first-round loss at the YONEX All England Open Badminton Championships.

The Mairs were on the losing side of a tense all-English battle which saw Lauren Smith and Marcus Ellis advance with a 19-21 21-16 22-20 win.

Their three-game defeat followed another deciding game loss at last year’s tournament and the two will now regroup ahead of the Spain Masters.

“We’ll reflect by crying in bed for about a week,” Mairs joked. Then we’ve got the Spain Masters and then the European Championships.

“To be fair, we're pretty resilient. You can see that in our careers, we’ve never been the best but we've found a way.

“This time last year, we had a heartbreaking loss and in Madrid two weeks later we came back and played the best badminton we have ever played in our lives and reached the semi-final so we will pick ourselves up and go again like we always do.

“This tournament is always special to us. This year, we were so focussed on the process, doing what it took to win that match and we didn’t so right now we are devastated.”

The Mairs, who married last year, took the first set having opened up an early advantage but were soon pegged back in the second.

The match moved to a deciding game with the largely English crowd picking a side and cheering on their favourites.

The Utilita Arena were rewarded with a close final set with the Mairs forcing Ellis and Smith to a second match point before the higher-ranked pair took it.

Ellis and Smith advance to the second round to face seed-topplers Dejan Ferdinansyah and Gloria Emmanuelle Widjaja.

For Mairs, he will assess and go again but maybe nursing some bruises after landing heavily on the