Scottish teams in good shape at European Championships

Published on Monday 7 December 2009 00:29

ALTHOUGH they have both suffered early defeats that perhaps they should not have, Scotland's men and women are in good qualifying shape as the early round-robin games of the Le Gruyere European Curling Championships unfold in Aberdeen.

David Murdoch and his world champion team of third Ewan MacDonald, second Pete Smith, and lead Euan Byers are defending their European crown this week, and they seemed to be going well with two workmanlike early wins. In their opener, the Scots beat Sweden by 3-2 in a game that they dominated, forcing five blank ends before using their final stone to seal their win.

After that, they had an even more comfortable win against France, beating them by 5-2.

They then faced the Czech Republic yesterday morning, stealing a single in the third end for a 2-1 lead when Jiri Snitil failed to draw inside the closest of three Scottish stones.

The Scots were in control from then on, giving up just a single in the sixth end to let the Czechs draw level at 2-2. After this, they reverted to a controlled blanking game for three ends, waiting for the last stone of the last end to knock off their victory.

When Murdoch came to play that stone, he was facing a Czech counter just outside the four-feet ring, which lay open and unguarded. Despite that, he rejected the chance to draw for the win and opted for a hit and run.

Uncharacteristically he caught a very short guard to hand the Czech team a surprise early Christmas present.

In the aftermath of what was a shock defeat, Murdoch, who was clearly upset with himself, said, "that was a poor end to a good game really. They never even threatened us – we were on top of them for 99 per cent of the game, apart from that last shot. It was a routine shot really, but that was a bad miss."

The Scottish men followed this with the most one-sided victory yet seen at these Championships, beating Finland by 15-1

Afterwards Murdoch said: "We decided to change our tactics, we thought we'd just play our way into the week cautiously, but after the Czech Republic game we decided to play the style of curling that you need to play to win the championship, and that means being a lot more aggressive."

A disastrous couple of ends in their opening game against Italy caused a shock defeat for the Scottish women as they went down by 6-11. Later, they recovered with a solid 7-4 win over England, and produced their best play of the tournament so far to beat Germany by 5-2 yesterday afternoon.

After that game, 19-year-old skip Eve Muirhead said: "That was a much better performance all round, so we're very pleased. We were strong as a team right through that game. We didn't take it on too much at the start and just edged our way into it."