[ritchiebaby]

This will be the first major Championship played after all sporting restrictions announced because of the pandemic. As would be expected the competitors and support staff will be living in a bubble at the WinArena in Calgary, Canada. They will be following strict Covid-19 protocols and there will be no spectators at the event. A few of the games are to be broadcast on Eurosport.

The competition starts on 2 April through to 11 April and the 14 teams taking part are Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, the Russian Curling Federation Team (RCF), Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and United States.

Following the 2-year anti-doping ban on Russia taking part in international curling, it has been determined that a Russian Curling Federation team qualify to play. They will not fly the Russian flag, not have the Russian anthem played and there will be no reference to the country during the event. This will also apply to the forthcoming Women's Championship, also to be played at the same venue under the same conditions. Hopefully the organisers will be stricter than they were previously.

[Lord Snooty]

Just getting started as winter ends. Are there many more competitions to come?

[ritchiebaby]

We're down to the bare minimum for this season, Snooty.

The Women's World Championships will be held in Calgary from 30 April to 9 May.
The Mixed Doubles World Championships will be held in Aberdeen, Scotland from 17 to 23 May.

In fact, if these were not qualifying events for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, they might not have gone ahead.

There are the Wheelchair World 'B' Championships in Lohja, Finland from 10 to 15 April, but as these do not affect the Home Nations, I'll not be doing a report on these.

After these it's October before the 2021-22 Championships resume, hopefully as normal.

[ritchiebaby]

We're finally getting underway tomorrow with World Championship Curling, when Scotland open their 13 round-robin games against hosts Canada at 9am local time. Then they play Denmark at 7pm with the game versus The Netherlands at 9am on Saturday, followed by Korea at 7pm. With an alleged time difference of 7 hours, these times should be 4pm and 2am respectively, but what with MDT, DST and BST to contend with, my brain is beginning to hurt.

After the round-robin games, the top six teams qualify for the play-off stage. The teams ranked first and second qualify directly for the semi-final games. The third-ranked team will play the sixth-ranked team in one qualification game and the fourth-ranked team and fifth-ranked team will face each other in the other.

Bruce Mouat's team were selected to represent Scotland and will make their third appearance as a team. They had a great first showing at the championship in 2018, finishing with a 12-2 record and winning the bronze medals. The players are Bruce Mouat (Skip), Grant Hardie (Vice-Skip), Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan with Ross Whyte as alternate.

[ritchiebaby]

A disappointing start to the event for Scotland, after they lost to Canada by 6-9. Well in control at the halfway stage, where they led 5-2 the wheels came off the wagon, losing 4 of the last 5 ends. Overall poor shot selection, in my opinion, but to be fair to Mouat, he was often left with little decent plays to make.

Still a defeat against one of the strong favourites is not a disaster and Scotland should be able to get at least 2 wins, possibly 3, out of the next 3 games.

[ritchiebaby]

The Scottish Recovery Plan strode into action last night and this morning with wins against Denmark by 7-2 and Netherlands by 9-4. Although the scores look good, they both hinged on one end.

Against Denmark the Scots were drawing 2-2 after 4 ends and managed to score a 4 to end up comfortable winners. Grant Hardie rated 100% in this game while the Scottish team scored an overall 93%.

The same applied to the game against the Dutch, as they again scored 4 shots after leading by 5-4 after 7 ends, prompting a concession. The team percentage in this game was 88%, which will be the minimum required in the later stages to gain a medal.

To put all this in perspective, Scotland only had 81% against Canada with the Canadians on 90%.

Korea is the night game tonight, with China being our opponents on Sunday at 9pm followed by medal favourites Sweden at 4pm on Monday and Germany at 2am on Tuesday - all UK time.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland continued their improved form in their two games to report on tonight.

Although once again they had to score one big end to ensure the win against Korea by 11-4, and only scoring in 3 ends -3,3,5.

It was much easier against China, scoring a 4 in the 2nd end and a 3 in the final end to run out 10-1 winners. To cement their dominance three of the players had percentages of 96%, 95% and 93%.

The Scots are doing quite well in 3rd equal position after 5 games with 4 wins, but have a few big games coming up over the next three days.

[ritchiebaby]

The first of the big games saw Scotland lose 5-6 to Sweden after an extra end, after the Scots were 3 down with 2 ends to play. So near and yet so far, but again no disgrace in losing to the current champions. Just to prove that percentages are not the be all and end all, the weakest player in the game, Niklas Edin, drew the match-winning shot with the last stone of the game. No doubt 15 years of world-class curling helped settle any nerves.

After Germany, Scotland are to play Japan at 9pm tomorrow, both games being eminently winnable for The Scots. Then the next big game will be versus Switzerland at 2pm on Wednesday morning. The Swiss have been rolling along nicely, probably better than expected.

[ritchiebaby]

After a poor start, where Germany led by 4 shots at the halfway mark, Scotland came back well to tie the scores at 7-7 with 2 ends to go and eventually won by 9-8.

So halfway through the round-robin games, Norway lead with 5 wins out of 6, closely followed by 6 teams tied for 2nd place - Canada, RCF, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and USA, each having 5 wins out of 7. Italy have 4 wins out of 7.

Scotland are currently playing Japan in their 8th game and are 5-3 up after 8 ends. EDIT The Scots win 6-3 after running the Japanese out of stones in the last end.

Following this game they play Switzerland through the night, then USA at 9pm tomorrow night and Italy at 2am on Thursday. The Scots will need to be at their best in these games to keep them high in the table and their opponents down - definitely crunch time approaching fast, especially considering the final 2 games are against RCF and Norway.

Just to prove the fragility of individual games, Germany's only win has been against leaders Norway and Korea have beaten Canada.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland have consolidated their position in second place with a 7-4 victory over Switzerland. The scores were tied after 7 ends and the Scots took control with a 2 and a 1, leaving the Swiss needing 3 shots to force an extra end - an impossible task with the Scots clearing Swiss stones out of play.

Scotland's remaining 4 games are all against teams in the top eight, probably the most demanding finish of those still in contention. The top two qualify directly for the semi-finals with 3rd to 6th having to play off for the other two places. Two wins from the 4 games should be enough to qualify for the play-offs, with 3 wins likely to be good enough for the top two.