C&B's Gina Aitken Wins Bronze at the European Curling Championships!

What a fantastic and gutsy performance by Team Scotland, with our own Gina Aitken playing third, in last week's European Curling Championships in Ostersund, Sweden. Team Scotland started the competition off strongly with good wins against Turkiye and Latvia. The team was under pressure from the start because they were "supposed" to win both those games, and win them they did. Their next two games were against strong opposition in Italy and the on-form Danish team. Two losses and it could all have gone horribly wrong - but how they bounced back with a huge win against one of the pre-tournament favourites, Anna Hasselborg's Swedish team. In a week of ups and downs, the Scots girls lost their next two games against the experienced German team under skip Daniela Jentsch and the Swiss World Number One team, skipped by Silvana Tirinzoni. After a comprehensive 10-1 win over Hungary, the Scots were left with a must-win game against Norway. Two things had to happen in this round of the competition: first, the Scots had to win their game and then second, other results had to go their way. It all came together and they were semi-final bound!

Gina concentrating hard during the Bronze play-off game v Italy (picture credit to Celine Stucki and the WCF) In the semi-final, the Scots girls came up against the hot team of the week, Madeleine Dupont's Danish team. Madeleine and her sister Denise have been on the circuit for many years. They have played well on occasion, but never really threatened. Well they threatened this week - and some! The Scottish girls had played positively against them in their round-robin game so went into the semi-final with some hope. Sadly for them a few rubs and some great Danish play in the first five ends saw the Scots eight points down and the game already out of their reach. They conceded as soon as they could in order to better prepare for their Bronze Medal game.

(from left) Skip Rebecca Morrison, Second Sophie Sinclair, Lead Sophie Jackson and Third Gina Aitken discuss the position late on in their game against Italy. Not in the picture is Fifth player Hailey Duff and coach Nancy Smith (picture credit Celine Stucki and the WCF). In the Bronze Medal game itself, the first half was a cagey affair and the two sides were tied, but come the second half of the game, the Scots donned their party clothes and played outstandingly! A two, followed by a stolen two, then a stolen single had them five shots clear playing the ninth end. They managed a force and the deflated Italians shook hands in what is surely the worst game of the week to lose. Congratulations to the Scottish team and particularly to Gina.

Kettle Trophy Round 5.2

A good win for John Steven, Raymond Preston, Joe Barry and Donald Kennedy over team Shona Watt keeps them in the hunt for honours come Christmas time. Looks like a solid performance. A big score of four in the seventh and last end perhaps makes the game look more one-sided than it actually was. Meanwhile, Dave Munro had a comprehensive win over club president Niall Gunn. He and his team were 5-0 ahead after four ends. Here is the results grid.

And now the league table. With two rounds to go. it is tight at the top of the table. There's no change at the top, but John Steven has forced himself back into contention with Friday's win. Jenny Barr is also right there with the leading pack. Interestingly, there is a definite "top-bottom" split between the top and bottom four. The next two rounds will be interesting indeed. Big game coming up in round 6 is John Steven v Karen Munro. If John wins, he leapfrogs Karen in the league table, but if Karen wins, then that would be it for John. On 9th December, John plays Brian Fleming - another huge game in the league context and Karen plays Niall Gunn. We may very well have to wait until 16th December to finally get the full picture - why? Jenny Barr plays Dave Munro that night and, depending on her result against Shona Watt on 2nd December, she could still be very much in the picture. Here's the league table after 5 of 7 rounds.

C&B at the Edinburgh International Senior Men's Curling Championship

As in the Women's championship, C&B was well represented in the Edinburgh International Senior Men's Championship. Andrew Galloway had a team entered in the competition. John Steven skipped the team in all of their games and the core of the team was Andrew Galloway at third and Dave Munro at second. Lead duties were shared between Andrew Barr, Raymond Preston and Joe Barry. They won their first game and had two close losses before coming up against a rampant Graham Cormack in their final game. Graham went on to win the competition. Brian Fleming is a regular team member in the Peter Wilson team. They were absolutely in the competition until near the end of their fourth-round game against Andrew Morton. Unfortunately for them, Andrew shaded the game in the last three ends, so that was the end of the Wilson challenge and of C&B's interest in the competition. You win some and you lose some!

C&B at the Edinburgh International Women's Senior Curling Championship

There were a number of club members competing in the Edinburgh International Women's Senior Curling Championship from 11th to 13th November. Some did well; some did less well! Let's start off with the bad news: Fran Stretton and her team of Morna Aitken, Katie Wood and Jenny Barr had done the hard work by beating the Liz Paul team in an earlier game, but they went on to lose to team Wilcox - they had lost both their games to date - so Fran and company ended up on one win and two losses - out the competition at the group stage. Maggie Barry was play second stones on Liz Paul's strong team; they fought their way out of the group stage in first place and then went onto win a convincing semi-final against Barbara Watt's Edinburgh team. Who was playing last stones in Barbara's team? None other than C&B's own Shona Watt. Team Paul, with Ann-Maree Davidson at third, Maggie Barry at second and Lawrie McKerrow at lead were very much in the final after four ends with the score tied at 2-2. The wheels came off the bus thereafter though, and two big ends in which Jackie Lockhart's strong Scottish Championship team scored two 4s sealed the game for Team Lockhart. Many congratulations to them but also to Team Paul who did so well to get to the final. Here's a picture of the runners-up team.

(from left) Lawrie McKerrow, Maggie Barry, Ann-Maree Davidson and Liz Paul, Runners-up in the Edinburgh International Senior Women's Curling Championship

Vicky Gumley on the Scotland Women's Curling Tour of the USA

C&B's own Vicky Gumley looks to have had a fantastic tour to the USA. After nearly a month's travelling and curling, our picture has Kim Dalland and Vicky wrestling with the Marguerite Roberts Friendship Quaich, a trophy that the Scots convincingly won. Both Kim and Vicky's teams won 13 out of their 18 games. The Scots won a total of 52 games out of the 90 that they played and the final shots score for the tour was Scotland 719, USA 536. Vicky and company travelled through 11 states with a mixture of home hosting and hotel nights. There is a website with more tour news at www.swusatour.wixsite.com/2022.

Welcome home, Vicky and many congratulations on a great victory. Far more importantly, the memories will live with you forever!

Doubles Competition 2022

Ah - it's shots-up first, is it? Should have checked - along with half the membership! And there were we thinking that 3-1 on the old ends count was a good thing after our first game, not that it would have made any difference, right enough. It didn't stop our eventual winners, Jennifer Marshall and Graham Paterson from scoring a very creditable six shots in their opening game; what made it even better was the fact that they scored in all four ends. We're talking "granny" here"! Their second game was equally impressive and they were four shots to the good in that one. Imagine this: the two of them won eight out of the nine ends that they played. The competition was left reeling in their wake, though Robin Copland and David Hogg ended up seven shots up, as did Kerry Clark and Betty Gibb. Robin and David captured second place on shots scored, so it was tight. Well done Jennifer and Graham and here's a wee picture for your respective albums!

A great day's play with lots of talking points, including one team suddenly announcing a "Power Play" at the start of one end. Power Play? The world's gone to hell in a handbag! Apparently, it involves setting up the stones in the wings rather than in the middle. Maybe I should have checked that one as well...!

Kettle Trophy Round 5.1

Don't you just love the fact that you can jump from round 3.2 two weeks ago to round 5.1 now? You'll be wondering why. Don't ask me - I failed maths 'O' level first time around and still struggle every time anyone starts talking about Pythagoras and his bloody theorem. To be fair, there hasn't been too much of a struggle on that front these past 56 years or so, given that no-one I know has EVER started a conversation about Pythagoras, but you get my drift. It's all to do with the draw and don't even start me on Picasso. There should be a paragraph break here. Unfortunately, I don't know how to put a paragraph break in, so you'll just have to accept a paragraph that's far too long. Actually, there is a way of putting a break in, which is to put in the scoring grid. Here it is.

Two massive results tonight have thrown the league wide open. Brian Fleming, Rowena Steven, Douglas Burns and Richie Anderson had a big win against the absent Mr Copland, skipped by Maggie Barry. They won five ends as well. Those ends have taken him above Karen Munro's team by two ends. Meanwhile, on the other sheet, Jenny Barr's 'come from behind' - with two ends to go, she was 6-3 down! - victory over hitherto undefeated Karen Munro has blown the league wide open. What looked like a procession for team K Munro has suddenly become a really tight race for the prizes with teams K Munro, Fleming, Barr and Steven, and even Niall Gunn on four points, now all in the hunt! Well done to Jenny, Jen Marshall, Margaret Nicol and Angela Downie. The crowds will be gathering in the next few weeks as we reach towards the denouement of the competition! Here's the league table.

Kettle Trophy Round 3.2

The competition has reached the half way stage with the completion of round 3 on Friday night. Two good games - one a draw between John Steven and Jenny Barr and the other a good win for Niall Gunn over Robin Copland, making his first appearance in the competition! Robin was 5-0 down before he and his team, Maggie Barry, Sarah Ford and Morag Wellman got themselves together. Niall had Betty Gibb at three, David Hogg (who had a splendid game - well played David!) and substitute Mike Wood throwing lead stones. Final score of 8-6 with each team scoring in four ends. In the other game, John Steven, Raymond Preston, Joe Barry and Donald Kennedy scored a three in the third end to take a 4-1 lead and must have thought that things were going their way - especially when they limited Jenny, Jen Marshall, Margaret Nicol and Angela Downie to a single point in end six to take a one-shot advantage into the seventh and last end. Great steal from Jenny though and a drawn game. Here's the Results grid with Friday's games highlighted.

And now the league table.

Friday's drawn match did not help John Steven and his team who now find themselves 3 points behind the undefeated Karen Munro. Their match at the beginning of December is beginning to look to be an important game - and a "must-win" for John. Brian can only watch. He can still win the league,but whether he does or not is in other teams' hands as he has already played (and lost) to Karen in the first round. In other breaking news, one team cannot now win the league - and it's only the beginning of November. Modesty forbids and all of that.