GOODALL BREAKS AUSTRALIAN MEDAL DROUGHT AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Australian super heavyweight boxer Joseph Goodall has won a bronze medal at the 2017 Boxing World Championships in Hamburg, losing his semi-final bout in a split-points decision overnight.

It’s the first medal for Australia at a men’s World Championships since 1991, and the country’s fourth overall. All four medals have been bronze.

Goodall, a silver medallist at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, lost to Azerbaijan’s Mahammadrusul Majidov 4-1 in Friday’s semi-final, guaranteeing the Queenslander a bronze medal.

It’s been a steady build for Goodall, after it was discovered he had contracted glandular fever before the 2014 Games.

It took him two years to fully recover from the fever and the associated chronic fatigue.

The last Australian medallists at an AIBA men’s World Championships were Justin Rowsell (lightweight) and Stephen Scriggins (welterweight) at the 1991 competition in Sydney.

Australia’s first bronze medal was won by Jamie Nicholson in the featherweight division at the 1989 World title in Moscow.