Kay Adams will be Team Muirhead's fifth player in Moscow, and David Edwards will fill that role for the David Murdoch team.The photo above is by Tom Brydone and shows David Murdoch's last stone on the way down the ice to the poppy, swept by Richard Woods and Ross Paterson, and watched behind by Scott Andrews and Michael Goodfellow. I understand it was a close hard fought game, of the highest quality. While many congratulations are due to David and his team, I cannot help but have sympathy for Tom Brewster, Greg Drummond, Scott and Michael. But, above all, it is great to see that we have two teams of such quality this season.
A number of blogallies have been in touch, questioning the fairness of the way the Euro Qualifying was run this season. They point out, amongst other things, that Brewster played Murdoch five times over the weekend. Brewster won three of these encounters, Murdoch just two. Yet it is Murdoch who will be in Moscow.
Hindsight is a great thing of course, and I wonder if the Royal Club Competitions Committee ever discussed the scenario that eventually played out at Perth. At the end of the double round robin, Team Brewster had won all six games, and the other three teams had each won just two. That of course, was put to one side, with the second part of the event, a 'best of three', beginning with a completely clean slate. Perhaps it would have been fairer if the record of the teams had been carried forward into the playoff, as one poster on the Scottish Curling Forum has suggested, see here.
Do we know anything of the deliberations of the Competitions Committee on this subject? The minutes of the committee last March talk about 'two options', but there is no detail. You can download the minutes from this page if you want to try and understand this further. And if you are disturbed by the way the weekend turned out, you should certainly express your concerns to one of the committee. They are:
Alan Durno (Convenor)
Colin Hamilton (Manager of Competitions)
Anne Donald (Minutes Secretary)
Clive Thomson (ASC)
Bill Duncan (ASC)
Eve Muirhead (Players Rep)
Pat Edington (President)
Bill Duncan (Vice-President)
Bob Kelly (Board)
Anne Malcolm (Board)
Photo © Tom Brydone
