Curling: Scotland slump to second defeat in succession

Scotland skip Eve Muirhead has seen her team lose consecutive matches to Switzerland and Japan in Swift Current, Canada.

They now face a tough challenge in their last round-robin game against hosts Canada if they are to book a place in the weekend’s medal games.

The Scottish team were over-run by Japan. The Japanese opened well with a score of three in the first end and followed that up with two more points in the third end and four in the fifth. When Japan scored one more in the seventh end, the Scots conceded. The only bright spot for the Scots was a tap-back by skip Eve Muirhead to score two points in the fourth end.

After that game, Muirhead said: “Give them their dues, they played great. They made everything and we just weren’t getting our stones in the right places. We were on the back foot from the start. Hopefully that’s our one bad game out of the way. We’ve got a big game later, so we can’t get too hung up on that.”

In the earlier game against Switzerland, it was the Scots who had the early advantage. Skip Muirhead drew for two in the first end and then produced a delicate tap-up to score one in the third end for a 3-1 lead. The Scots looked even better after the fourth when they had a steal of two to take a 5-1 lead. But the tide turned in the second half. In the sixth end, Muirhead’s attempted double take-out did not remove a second Swiss stone and Switzerland’s skip Binia Feltscher was able to hit out a Scottish stone to score two points and reduce Scotland’s lead to 5-3. This started a Swiss revival as they had single steals in each of the seventh, eighth and ninth ends. Muirhead was forced to draw for one in the tenth end to level the score at 6-6.

In the extra end Switzerland’s Feltscher played a perfectly-judged hit and roll with her last stone to score the one shot needed for a 7-6 win.