Curling: Scots lose to Canada but can still progress to world final

This was the third loss of the week for Eve Muirhead and her team and, with Germany beating Switzerland by 8-2, Scotland and Germany finished the round-robin on the same record of eight wins and three losses.

Because Germany had also beaten Scotland earlier in the week, they ranked second ahead of Scotland and now face Canada in the Page one-two game, with the winner going to the final and the loser given a second chance via the sole semi-final. The winner of the three/four game goes onto the semi-final as well.

At this stage, the Scots do not even know who their next opposition will be as Sweden and USA also finished on the same record tied for fourth and must play a sudden-death tie-breaker.

In the game against Canada, the Scots had a good first half and went into the break tied on 3-3. But slack play in the sixth and seventh ends was the Scots' undoing.

In the sixth, Muirhead's final draw was too strong, allowing Canada's Jennifer Jones to draw for two. Then, in the seventh, Muirhead's last draw attempt finished well short to give up a steal of three, and a 3-8 deficit.

The Scots took a single from the eighth and stole one in the ninth when a Jones hit went wrong, but Canada ran Scotland out of stones in the tenth for their win.

Afterwards, Muirhead said: "We had a good solid first half but then we lost a silly two in the sixth when I put my last stone through the back. We were chasing from then on and we're disappointed. If we'd won that we would have gone into the one/two game ranked number one, but we've just got to put that behind us."

Looking forward she added: "Now we've got a semi-final to play (as well as the Page play-off) and we're just two matches away from the final that we've always been trying to get into."