[ritchiebaby]

The 2016 Ford World Womens Curling Championships are being held in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada, starting on Saturday 19 March. This will be the second time that Swift Current has been the venue, the last time being in 2010, when Eve Muirhead's Scotland team won the Silver Medals.

The twelve teams who have qualified are: hosts Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Scotland, defending champions Switzerland, Sweden and the USA. They will battle it out in seventeen sessions of round-robin play, until the evening of Thursday 24th March. The Gold/Silver and Bronze Medal finals will take place on Sunday 27 March.


David Hay (coach), Eve Muirhead, Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Sarah Reid after winning the Scottish Championships.
With the addition of alternate player Rachel Hannen, who played in the World Juniors a week ago in Denmark, these are Scotland's representatives for the next week or so. Eve Muirhead won Gold in these Championships 3 years ago in Latvia and also Bronze in the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Scotland's first game is on Saturday evening against Olympic silver medallists Sweden, followed by two games on Sunday, against Korea and Germany.

[ritchiebaby]

The Opening Ceremony

Scotland opened their account with a defeat from Sweden by 3-5 last night, but won 8-6 against Korea in this afternoon's game which finished a few minutes ago. Swift Current is on Mountain Time which is 7 hours behind GMT. Tonight's game against Germany will finish around 4am GMT.

Scotland's games tomorrow will be against Italy and USA.

[St Charles Owl]

Just a little correction Ritchie, Swift Current is currently 6 hours behind the UK due to the fact that North America have already moved their clocks forward a couple of weeks ago. Once you move your clocks forward next weekend it will revert to being 7 hours behind.

So you should be fine to watch all the Germany match now you get that extra hour!!!

[ritchiebaby]

Thanks for that information, SCO, but don't get me started on extra hours and mucking about with time!!! Why do people have to make everything so complicated???    I could start a rant here, but I'll just carry on being cool, calm and collected.

Anyway, Scotland beat Germany 10-3 after 7 ends, leading to a concession by the Germans. In this afternoon's game, Scotland led Italy 5-0 after 2 ends, but being the generous to the underdogs, the Scots let Italy level the game 7-7 after 9 ends. Just as well Scotland scored 1 shot in the last end to win the game and move on to 3 wins after 4 games.

Scotland's game against USA tonight will start at 1am GMT and I'll still not be staying up for the finish! Tuesday's games are against Denmark and Finland.

[ritchiebaby]

In the late, late game last night, Scotland scored 2 shots in the last end to secure a 6-5 win over USA and keep themselves at the top of the table along with Canada, Japan, Russia and Switzerland.

The Scots played in their first early game this morning and came flying out of the blocks, scoring a 3 in the first end against Denmark, They finished off with another 3 to win convincingly by 9 shots to 3. Sharing top spot with 5 wins out of 6 are Canada, Scotland and Switzerland. Japan and Russia, both on 4 wins, are playing just now in their sixth game.

After Scotland play Finland in the late game, they have a really hard finish to the round robin games, playing Russia and Switzerland tomorrow and Japan and Canada on Thursday. Confidence and a good early start to the games is key, especially when there are still so many teams in contention.

[ritchiebaby]

Finland, with only 1 win so far, proved a tough nut crack in the late game and after 3 ends they led Scotland 3-1. However, Eve Muirhead drew the shot with the last stone of the game to give Scotland a 6-5 win.

After that fright, Scotland shone against Russia right from the start, winning 7-1 after 7 ends, when Russia conceded after managing to score a shot.

In the afternoon game, Scotland again started really well and led Switzerland 5-1 after 4 ends. Then, for some unknown reason, the Scots let Switzerland win 4 ends in a row to fall 5-6 behind coming into the last end. Eve Muirhead managed to stop the rot with a single shot to take the game into an extra end, but with the Swiss having last stone, the Scots lost out 6-7.

The upshot is that Scotland are still tied for 1st place with 7 wins out of 9, along with Switzerland who have 7 wins out of 8. Canada and Japan both have 6 wins out of 8 and Russia are in 5th place with 5 wins out of 8. As a consolation to Scotland, Switzerland play Russia in tonight's late game, so one of them will lose some ground.

[St Charles Owl]

Eve Muirhead needs more publicity than she gets!! Besides being a very good looking lady she would be a brilliant advert for curling and Scottish womens sport in general!!

[Lord Snooty]

Once again, the "we love curling" BBC aren't showing any of this. 

[ritchiebaby]

Like this, SCO?

[St Charles Owl]

Yep, that does the job nicely!!!