Both teams that represented Great Britain at the Winter Olympics face battles to earn the right to go to this season’s World Championship after losing their opening play-off matches at Perth’s Dewars Centre.
Just five days after returning home from PyeongChang, they were pitched into the best-of-three series that have been set up to decide who will represent Scotland at the Worlds and their matches followed very similar patterns as they struggled early on to make adjustments to the environment, playing in front of a smattering of spectators as compared with the cacophonous surroundings at the Gangneung Curling Centre in which the Olympic matches were staged.
“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult, but we knew this is what we had to do, so we prepped the best we can for it,” Eve Muirhead, skip of the Team GB women’s team admitted following their 9-6 defeat to newly-crowned Scottish champions Team Fleming.
“It’s not been easy, but we can’t use that as an excuse because we knew all along that’s exactly what we’re going to have to do, get home and more or less get straight back into it.
“I guess it is a bit difficult to adjust to the environment and you’re also playing under certain ice conditions for two and a half weeks when they’ve played the whole Scottish Championships on this surface, so it does take a little bit of getting used to, so hopefully the second part of that game, that’s us got into the groove.”
Rival skip Hannah Fleming was highly satisfied with the way her rink performed against the team that has dominated the domestic women’s game for several years, but is anticipating a battle today as they play the second match this afternoon and then a potential decider this evening.
“We had a good strong start and took advantage of some of the mistakes Team Muirhead made in the early ends, so we’re really pleased with that,” she said of the way they shot into a 7-1 lead after just three ends.
“Tomorrow’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to have the same mind frame and even if it goes to three games we’re prepared for that, because they will push us to the end. Hopefully we can do it in two but if it goes to three we’re ready for it.”
In the men’s play-off the margin was 9-4 in favour of the new Scottish champions led by Bruce Mouat and Team GB men’s skip Kyle Smith acknowledged that his men had left themselves too much to do.
“We’ve had a few days at home to recover, so were feeling fine coming into that game, but I missed a couple of shots in the first two ends and all of a sudden you’re five nil down and it’s a long way to go,” he said.
“We were feeling good, but you don’t give yourself much of a chance when you do that early on. Sadly, we didn’t play well enough today, but we’ve got another chance tomorrow. It’s all to play for still.”
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