Eve’s shot at glory proved she’s a winner... not a loser
Muirhead’s miss took real guts
A COUPLE of hours before the Scottish rugby team gave each of us the chance to puff out our chests on Saturday, another one of our own was exhibiting that age-old Caledonian trait of failing gloriously.
Or at least that’s what it looked like if you hadn’t witnessed Eve Muirhead’s attempt to leave the Winter Olympics with a medal but looked only at the result.
GB (Scotland in all but name as Muirhead’s team of Anna Sloan, Vicki Gray and Lauren Gray all hail from north of the border) lost the bronze medal play-off to Japan 5-3. Pretty straightforward, you’d think? It was anything but.
Here’s how it panned out. Going into the 10th and final end, Japan were leading 4-3 but with one stone to go, our girls were lying one shot up.
If Muirhead had curled her final stone short or long, it would’ve been 4-4 and into an extra end with hope still alive.
That would have been the conservative, no risk option. Many would have taken it. Live to fight another day and all that. But Muirhead had the chance to put GB two up with that final stone and had she done so, the bronze they won in Sochi four years ago would have been emulated.
The risk was if she was a fraction out, she could disturb the stones within the circle and all would be lost.
She went for it. Perhaps she was thinking even if she had played safe, the Japanese could have won the extra end and she’d have been left to wonder forever: what if?
Well, Muirhead won’t die wondering and it’s that kind of attitude that has taken her to the top of her sport.
Her shot missed by an inch, nudged her own ‘leading’ stone out of the way and left their opponents with a ‘one’ to clinch the victory. But the Scot shouldn’t be berated for that.
She said: “The shot was there for the game and as a skip you’re going to try to play that shot to win. We win as a team, we lose as a team. As skip, it’s me that misses the shot but it’s a full-on team effort out there.
“Any other day I guarantee that shot would’ve come off. For this week we’ve just been the wrong side of the inch.”
What I loved about Muirhead’s decision to go for that shot was the confidence she had in herself to make it in the full knowledge if it went wrong, the consequences were fatal in a sporting context.
That takes an enormous amount of self-belief. It’s not a particularly Scottish trait but perhaps Andy Murray should take a bit of credit for instilling within us the knowledge we don’t always have to be ‘nearly’ men and women in sport.
A couple of hours later, Finn Russell displayed exactly the same characteristics at Murrayfield with the pass of the season, a long looping throw over the head of England’s Jonathan Joseph, perfectly timed for Huw Jones to collect and sprint forward to ultimately set up the second Scotland try for Sean Maitland.
It was outrageous and audacious. Jim Baxter playing keepy-uppy at Wembley – that kind of gallusness.
Russell had been panned for two previous performances and the easy option when he got that ball on his own 22 would have been to play it safe.
It takes a special kind of mentality to know an interception there would have led to an English try and an absolute slaughtering but to go ahead and do it anyway.
Russell’s pass soared into the air for what seemed like forever. Evaded the grasping Joseph’s arm it dropped into the hands of Jones so perfectly the centre didn’t have to break stride and was already at full speed as he took the ball and powered past the white shirts.
Russell’s guts and guile were rewarded spectacularly. In South Korea, the same qualities shown by Muirhead had the opposite outcome.
That’s sport. But it’s great to see our sportsmen and women breaking free of their shackles and trying to win, rather than not to lose.
Murray instilled within us the knowledge we don’t have to be ‘nearly’ men and women