Muirhead and Murdoch back on the ice for Scottish title

JUST 72 hours after returning home from their disappointing Olympic campaigns, both of Britain's Olympic curling teams will have to find renewed energy as skip David Murdoch and his men's team and women's skip Eve Muirhead attempt to successfully defend their national titles in the closing stages of the Scottish Championships, which get underway in Perth today.

To accommodate television timetables as well as the Olympic teams, this season's Scottish Championships finals were split into two sections, so that now the last four teams in both the Bruadar Men's Championship and the Columba Cream Women's Championship face each other in curling's Page Play-off format this weekend.

This format rewards good round-robin performances, with the top two round-robin teams having two chances to make it to the final, while the third and fourth-placed teams now face sudden-death elimination.

In echoes of his performances in Vancouver and at the Aberdeen European Championships in December, Lockerbie's world champion David Murdoch disappointed in the Bruadar round-robin, only managing to finish third overall.

As a result, his team are two games away from elimination as he faces a best-of-three encounter with fourth-placed former world champion Hammy McMillan from Stranraer today, with the loser going out and the winner moving onto the semi-final game.

In the one/two play-off, another team peppered with former world champions, led by Perth's Warwick Smith, have a best-of-three showdown with some Perth team youngsters, led by Glen Muirhead, older brother of female Olympic skip Eve. The winners of that go directly to the one-game final and the losers awaiting whoever emerges victorious between Murdoch and McMillan.

Eve Muirhead won the national title with a different line-up last year, but her Olympic team managed to finish top of the pile in the Columba Cream round-robin, so they now face second-placed Gail Munro of Stranraer – sister of Hammy McMillan – in the one/two play off best-of three.

Murrayfield's Gillian Howard's team, skipped by current world junior champion Kay Adam, and Sarah Reid's team from Kilmarnock's Galleon Centre, contest the three/four Page game.

As well as gaining national titles, this weekend's winners will go on to represent Scotland at the World Championships – in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada, for the women's event, and Cortina, Italy, for the men.