C&B Win Midlothian Province for Third Time in Six Years

The Midlothian Province Bonspiel is one of those lovely old-fashioned "curling in the raw" competitions that pitches clubs versus clubs over three rounds of competitive curling in one hectic, all-consuming day!  Twelve club members form into three teams; the draw is made; each of the teams play their games and the results are aggregated on a shots-up basis.  This is not a competition about ends, nor does the total score make a jot of a difference; this is a competition where the sole judge of winning and losing is the number of shots-up a club is over the three games.  Oh - yes, there are formulas in place in the event of a tie, and some of the smaller clubs get to put two teams in on a pro-rata shots-up kind of a scenario, but we needn't worry ourselves about such details here!  Instead, let John Steven, who played one of the three teams, tell what really happened on the big day!

The first C&B team were out of the blocks at 12 noon.  Skip was Brian Fleming, third Jenny Barr, second Mike Wood and lead Betty Gibb showed little mercy to Lothian Ladies and won their game 18-1.  Their 6 in the first end set the tone of a focused and dominant display.

The second team played at 16.00 with skip Andrew Galloway, third Dave Munro, second Raymond Preston and lead Lois Copland.  They took on Holyrood and came away with a fantastic 17-0 whitewash, including a four at the first end!  Holyrood had no answer to the onslaught of draws to the four foot and some precision take-outs.

The third team, playing in the always competitive last session of the competition at 20.00, was skipped by Niall Gunn, with John Steven at third, Rowena Steven at second and Bob Barr at lead.  They knew that only an embarrassing defeat against a strong-looking Gogar Park team - coupled perhaps with freakish wins by either RBS or Carrington - could rob them of victory.  As the game progressed, the challenge from RBS and Carrington dissipated somewhat, but it was their opponents who took up the challenge, leading after five ends by 5 shots and suddenly getting perilously close to the nine shots win over C&B that they needed for overall victory in the competition!

Betty Gibb was sitting in the club rooms looking down on the action.  Sanguine at first, the hand signals were coming thick and agitatedly fast come the sixth end of eight!  She needn't have worried; Niall and his troops came to the party, knuckled down and displayed the stern stuff for which the club is famous!  They transformed a 6-1 deficit into an unlikely 8-7 victory, ensuring that the club won all of its games and the trophy.

Some of the C&B Curlers who took part in the Midlothian Bonspiel
(from left): Bob Barr, Lois Copland, Raymond Preston, Betty Gibb, Niall Gunn (with the magnificent trophy) Andrew Galloway, Rowena Steven and John Steven (with the sponsor's banner).
Missing from the picture are Brian Fleming, Jenny Barr, Mike Wood and Dave Munro.