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Monday, September 26, 2011

Team of the Weekend

There was certainly plenty of curling to keep track of this past weekend. Who gets the Scottish 'Team of the Weekend' award from Skip Cottage Curling? (Rules published on request!)

Should it go to the winners of the U17 at Lockerbie, the unbeaten Gregor Cannon team, see here?

Or should the award go to the David Murdoch team, playing in the Point Optical Curling Classic in Saskatoon, see results here? David lost his first game in the A Road of this 32-team triple knockout. In B, the Scots won two more games, before losing and dropping to C, with one life remaining. There they won three more games, the last by stealing an extra end, to qualify for the quarterfinals. The competition carries on today, Monday.

In Oslo at the Radisson Blu Oslo Cup, Sarah Reid's team won three of their four section games, Canada's Heather Nedohin providing their one loss. It came to a tiebreaker, with the Scots losing out, going down (again) to the Canadians. All the results from Oslo can be found here.

Eve Muirhead's side also lost a game in their section, but won a tiebreaker, and then another qualifying game on Saturday - making four games that day - to win through to the quarterfinals. Yesterday they beat Bingyu Wang's Chinese side, before losing out in the semifinal to Canada's Jennifer Jones, the eventual winners. Is Team Muirhead my Team of the Weekend?

In the Radisson Blu men's competition, three of the four Scottish teams reached the quarterfinals. Jay McWilliam's team lost in their quarterfinal tie, but a great performance for the young side. David Edwards and Tom Brewster played each other in their quarterfinal game, with the latter coming though. Team Brewster then beat Sweden's Kristian Lindstrom to reach the final, but then lost out to Niklas Edin. TotW?

Could Skip Cottage Curling's "Team of the Weekend' be the other Scottish men's team at Oslo, skipped by Logan Gray? No matter that the Scots won just one of their four section games. They played against Thomas Ulsrud's Norwegian team, the rink that introduced the Loudmouth golf trousers to an unsuspecting curling world at the last Olympics. This game was a 'battle of the pants', see below, which took the sport to places that no curler has gone before, in the fashion stakes at any rate!

L-R: Harvard Vad Petersson, Ali Guthrie, Christopher Svae, Logan Gray, Torger Nergard, Sandy Gilmour, Thomas Ulsrud, Steven Mitchell. It gladdens my heart to see such enthusiastic members of the 'Ban the Drab' society! The inaugural TotW award goes to Logan, Ali, Steven and Sandy!

Many thanks to Logan for permission to repost this photo. It's a classic!