Battered Archer and Goode win the battledore for bronze

This was a match that no one wanted to play. Michael Sogaard was adamant that it shouldn't have happened. His partner, Rikke Olsen, agreed. The Danes had just been the losers in the battle for the bronze, so these were not comments that drew gasps of shock from the listeners. Sogaard was so emotionally bruised by the encounter on court that he could hardly speak afterwards.

"Yes, we are the European champions, but what does that matter compared to this. I don't have words to express what I feel now," he said, and a cloak of silence came down, masking the intensity of the hurt.

Simon Archer and Jo Goode had no pain to mask; they were royalty for an afternoon. Yet they both agreed that the match should never have been played. Both teams deserved a bronze.

"We had two sets of bronze medals for semi-final losers in Barcelona," said Archer. "We lost that in Atlanta and it should be brought back. They do it for boxers because they get beaten up. Well, we get beaten up out there."

He had the evidence to support his argument - an inflamed patella tendon before the games, a blackened toenail and a pulled pectoral muscle that had to be massaged in the breaks.

The sore chest did Archer no favours; time and again, the 27-year-old dinked the high returns just over the net when, for all the world, the high shuttle was quivering in anticipation of the trademark wallop. The constriction could have altered the course of events but Sogaard maintained that he didn't play on it. "If you start trying to do that, only you will suffer," he said. "You must play your own game."

Both pairs had come into this match still suffering; each had seen a better medal snatched from their grasp. The Danes had led China's Zhang Jun and Gao Ling by 14-7 in the third before losing the game and match. Archer and Goode were hammering the Indonesians Tri Kusharyanto and Minarti Timur before a seemingly impenetrable lead evaporated. Hearts and minds were dwelling on old and vanquished causes.

All this should have made for a dreadful match. But to apply the local patois, this was a beaut. If ever there was argument for keeping the third-place play-off match, this quartet of antagonistic players supplied it. They may not have wanted to be there, but they could hardly have embellished the occasion with a more stirring and passionate contest.

For the first game, the shuttles were all dropping one side of the net, Archer and Goode beginning as they had against the Indonesians, the game comfortably theirs at 15-4. Having seen the walls crumble a day earlier, they were inclined to circumspection and in the second game the brickwork began to look suspect. Sogaard had a stormer and almost single-handedly claimed it 15-12. For the most part Olsen just looked on in admiration.

In the last game, the see-saws were out. Archer is a volatile player; he will give you the heartburn while Goode supplies the antacid. For the most part in the final game, dyspepsia prevailed.

From 6-4 ahead, they went to 6-9 down; seven services passed without them winning a single point. They clawed back to 11-11, when Archer hit such a dreadful shot that you began to believe that he really did not want a medal.

You could have sustained that belief for about two minutes, as the score inched into the Danes' favour and the first match point (with Sogaard and Olsen still on their first serve) came up on the electronic scoreboard. Then Archer, and Goode too, dug deep and deeper still. They won two points to relieve the Danes of their serves, squared the score and went two points ahead on Archer's serve, before winning it 17-14 on Goode's. It was can-can time. "We play a lot of games like this," Goode said. "You have to keep your head. You never think you've lost until the last point."

In the final, Kusharyanto and Timur romped the first game, winning 15-4, and looked set for the title before Zhang and Gao made a comeback to win the next two games and the title. It was stirring, passionate, see-saw stuff, and wonderful to watch, like so much in this tournament.