Time for reflection will be at end of season

The Olympics give curling publicity that it can’t get close to at any other time but our season didn’t end in PyeongChang – far from it. Obviously, you can’t stop yourself from thinking about the games and the shots you’ve played when you have just missed out on a medal.

But the time for proper reflection will be in April.

At the moment the emotions haven’t changed that much since that last end didn’t go our way in the bronze medal match.

It was a pretty brutal to come away with nothing after all the work we’ve put in – and after playing really well in a lot of our matches.

Overall, I would give ourselves about a 7.5 out of 10 for the competition as a whole.

There were some big wins against the likes of Switzerland and Canada and obviously a couple of painful defeats after we got through to the play-offs.

The feeling of ‘no regrets’ is still there.

I’m glad that I went for my shots. It would have been much harder to take if I was sitting back home thinking ‘if only I took that shot on.’

You can back into a medal by hoping that your opponent makes a mistake but that’s never been my mind set. And it’s not how I’ve won World and European golds.

Knowing that it all comes down to you is the life of a skip and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

That position in the team doesn’t suit everybody but it’s a responsibility that I wouldn’t want to pass on to anyone else.

Anna Hasselborg’s team deserved to win gold in the end.

South Korea were the form team going into the play-offs but Sweden raised their game when they needed to and their stats in the final were outstanding.

For us, we’ve got to quickly refocus for the play-off against Hannah Fleming’s rink at Perth this weekend to get into the Worlds.

It goes without saying that we don’t want to miss out.

It will be a mental test because you can never be sure how much you have left in the tank after an Olympic Games and all the preparation that went into it.

But I’m pretty confident that we’ll bring a good game to the Dewar’s Centre.

The support we’ve received has been a real lift and I’d like to thank everybody who has sent messages of support.

Like I said, we’ll discuss how we move forward when the season is over.

But I do know already that I’m still young, still hungry, still love curling and still feel I’ve got a lot more to achieve.

New horizons

It would have been much harder to take if I was sitting back home thinking, ‘if only I took that shot on’

I think that the sport has come out of the Olympics in a better place than it went into them.

Some big name teams like Team Homan, Team Coe, Team Edin and ourselves didn’t achieve what we wanted to.

But to see new nations win medals can only be a good thing for the sport.

Gold for the American men’s team could be huge.

As a nation the USA tend to get into a sport when they have some success so this really could open up new horizons for curling.

Olympic joy for Team Hasselborg as the Swedish team clinched gold in the women’s event.