Lymphoy Cup Round 1 Results and League Table

Always an interesting night is the first night of a new competition and last Friday was no exception. It takes time for new teams to bed down together: skips need to read each of their teammates' individual throwing styles; are they consistent? are players normally wide - or tight? how do they release the stone? On the kind of ice and with the aggressive stones at the rink, these are important questions. And then there are the skips themselves. One of them at least was having a bit of an issue. His team was playing pretty well, but it all went Pete Tong when he came to throw his stones. Imagine the Mall - not the shopping centre! The Mall in London that runs in a straight line from Admiralty Arch to Buckingham Palace - that Mall. So further imagine that the mall is an ice rink and your job as a curler is to hit Buckingham Palace at the far end. How wide is Buckingham Palace? No idea, but it's a bloody sight wider than a curling stone. Anyhow, our hero would have missed Buckingham Palace nine times out of ten. No argument. No discussion. A shocker of a game. So anyhow, I lost - despite the best efforts of Jennifer Marshall, Raymond Preston and Graham Paterson. Karen Munro, Morna Aitken, Douglas Burns and Angela Downie ran out easy winners. Betty Gibb skipped Norman Nicol's team. She, Morag Wellman, Fran Stretton and Stuart Ronald lost out on the end count to Brian Fleming, but scores of five in end 3 and three in end 5 were enough for them to run out 9-6 winners in their game. Shona Watt skipped John Steven's team in his absence and was involved in the tightest scoreline of the night - a 5-4 win over Dave Munro. A two for Dave in end 7 made the scoreline look a bit more respectable! Good start for Shona, Rebecca Steven, Maggie Barry and David Hogg. Best win of the night was Jenny Barr's 10-2 win over Katie Wood. Jenny, Niall Gunn, Lois Copland and Donald Kennedy (welcome back, Donald!) swept to their win with some fine play. So - here are the results grid and league table after round one. Long way to go, but March will come round before we know it!