After a decade in the ring, Natasha Jonas admits the time is right to hang up her boxing gloves and take a step back from the demands of the sport.

Jonas formed part of the three-strong England women’s team who helped make history last year by competing in the first Commonwealth Games to feature female boxing.

Having taken silver at the 2014 European Championships leading up the Games, the Liverpudlian was viewed as one of the favourites to win gold in Glasgow.

But unfortunately things did not go her way, losing to Australia’s Shelley Watts in her opening fight after injury her foot.

Despite that disappointment, Jonas can still look back on a career of considerable highs which included world championship bronze in 2012 shortly before becoming the first woman to box for Great Britain at the Olympic Games.

And after first taking up the sport as a way of losing weight, the 30-year-old insists she will look back with pride on all that she achieved.

She said: “When I started boxing 10 years ago I was an overweight, unemployed scally from Toxteth and if you’d have told me then that I would win a world championship medal and compete in front of 10,000 people at the Olympic Games I would never have believed it, so I am very proud to have achieved those things and done so well in the sport.  

“I have been to some great places, had some amazing experiences and being able to share them with such a fantastic group of people is something I will treasure forever.

“It just felt like the right time to retire.  Boxing is an extremely tough sport and very few people ever see the training and hard work that goes into it and after doing it for a long time, I just decided that it was time to do something else.

“Being away from camp to recover from my recent injury has given me time to think and I just came to the conclusion that I did not want to go back to the demands of full-time training and that now is the right time to retire.”

© Sportsbeat 2015