ROSS Murdoch and Hannah Miley offered their apologies to the nation for failing to live up to their Glasgow 2014 gold medals – but insisted they would be daft not to see a silver lining in second place at the Commonwealth Games. The swimming pair, who claimed gold in the 200m breaststroke and 400m individual medley on the opening night at Tollcross four years ago, contributed a pair of silver medals to a healthy opening day haul of five medals but still found themselves agonisingly pipped at the post stroke-for-stroke by their English rivals James Wily and Aimee Willmott respectively.

“I’m delighted to come away with a medal,” said Murdoch, from Balloch. “I’d be daft if I said I wasn’t happy to be stood up on the podium. But I’d loved to have come first, loved to have backed it up from Glasgow. I’ve said before that I wasn’t defending anything, but I did feel a strong sense of pride and honour going out there tonight and I wanted to provide for the country. I’d love to have heard Flower of Scotland again, but alas it was to no avail. It is what it is at the end of the day.”

Wilby was back in seventh with 50m to go, but made up almost a second and a half on the Scot to take victory by 0.26 secs. “My last 50m was dire,” admitted Murdoch. “I was dying there in that last 25. I think I pushed either the second 25 of my second 50 or the first 25 of the third 50 just a tad hard and it ate away from the last bit of my race.

“To be honest, I wasn’t really too sure of anything going down the last 50. I had tunnel vision on. I was just trying to get myself to the end of the race. So no, I didn’t have any idea where he was.

“But I’m not standing here trying to sell a sob story. I don’t want anybody feeling sorry for me at all. A year and a half ago [after Rio, when he contemplated giving up the sport] I was a completely different man to the one I am now.”

Miley fell just short in her bid to create history as the first Scottish winner of the same event in three consecutive games, but said she had no regrets. “It’s safe to say I left nothing in the pool,” the 28-year-old from Inverurie said. “And I’m so glad to have come away with a medal. It’s my fourth games and to be on the podium for the same event for the third time is amazing. It’s obviously not the gold that everyone was expecting and hoping for. I can only apologise. But it’s still a medal – and it’s never been about the medal, for me.”

“I have no regrets, none whatsoever,” she added. “I can’t be disappointed with that swim. There was expectation and pressure for me to come and win that gold. And I was always worried that, if I didn’t achieve that, I would be seen as a disappointment. But, you know, there’s nobody really in the Commonwealth still swimming the 400 medley at the age of 28.

“‘I’m still smiling, I’m still really happy with my performance. And this is sport, you know, Aimee gave me one heck of a race. I commend her efforts, fantastic, and that’s sport. I want people to know that I’m still a fighter. I might not be the tallest. I might not be the strongest. But I’ll always be the hardest working athlete I can possibly be.”

Would this be her last Commonwealth Games? "I only want to carry on if I think I can still improve,” she said. “I don’t want to go there [Birmingham] and just make up the numbers - I want to be competitive.”