Muirhead delivers decisive blow as Scots defeat Russia to top group
● Confident team in full control and now face same opposition in semi-final while Brewster’s rink finish in sixth position
Eve Muirhead and her Scottish women’s team completed theirround-robinprogramme with a confident 8-4 win over Russia yesterday at the Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships at the Braehead Arena, and can now concentrate on today’s semi-final game, when they will face the Russians again.
Following their defeat at the hands of Russia, Tom Brewster’s Scottish men are now out of medal contention and have finished sixth overall.
In the women’s game, the Russians started with last stone, and opened the scoring with a single shot in the second end. After this the Scots took control, scoring two in the third and then stealing one in the fourth for a 3-1 lead.
Russia did manage to level the game at 3-3 with a score of two in the fifth end, but a wellplayed
0 Anna Sloan: Fighting fit. sixth end, completed by a controlled draw by Muirhead gave the Scots a score of three and a 6-3 lead from which they never looked back.
After blanking the seventh end, Muirhead drew her last in the eighth, scoring two this time for 8-4 after which the Russians conceded.
Afterwards, Muirhead said, “I think it was very important (to keep winning). I guess you can always take your foot off the pedal in that last roundrobin game when you know you’ve secured that number one spot, but we didn’t do that, and it was crucial that we didn’t, so we’re really looking forward to the play-off stages now.”
Speaking about her returning third player Anna Sloan she added: “It’s great to have Anna back after injury. It’s been a roller-coaster end of last season and beginning of this season. Now she’s back and fighting fit. She’s worked 2 Eve Muirhead wasintop form as she guided her rink to victory over Russia yesterday, the Scots maintaining a run of nine round-robin matches unbeaten. really hard to get into the position she’s in and she’s playing great.”
Looking forward she said: “There’s a whole lot of time before the semi-final, I like keeping busy but our family and friends are here, so I’m looking forward to that.”
These results now set up a semi-final re-match between Scotland and Russia, while Sweden will face the Czech Republic.
At the other end of the table, Finland and Norway are now relegated while eighth-placed Italy will face a challenge from the eventual “B” Division winners for the last European place at the 2017 World Championship in Beijing. Kieran Merrilees has been a promising Scot for more years than he cares to remember. But signs that he might finally be about to reach his full potential were in evidence in yesterday’s Scottish Open Grand Prix at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.
The Scottish No 1 swept aside Taiwan’s Chinghung Kuo 21-13, 21-13 and was delighted to claim his place in the last 16.
“I was a bit anxious because he had beaten someworld-classplayers,” said Merrilees. “It might have looked a comfortable victory, but it didn’t feel too comfortable.”
Now 27, Merrilees feared his career might have come to an abrupt end when he cut his hand on a glass while washing dishes last Christmas Eve.
“It was half an inch from cutting the main tendon and, if that had happened, that would have been it as far as badminton was