[ritchiebaby]

The World Mixed Doubles Qualification Event is taking place at the Dumfries Ice Bowl in the South of Scotland from Friday 2 December until Wednesday 7 December. A total of 26 teams will be divided into four groups, where they will play a round-robin format. Round-robin play will begin at 5.15pm on Friday 2 December to 7.30pm on Monday 5 December, after which the qualification games for the 4 available places will take place on Tuesday 6 December at 10am and the final games will be at 10am on Wednesday 7 December.

After the round-robin stage, the top two teams in each group will progress to the play-offs. A series of games will then determine the four qualifiers. The format is far too complicated to summarise here, suffice to say that the winners will be determined by the end.

The 26 teams playing in Dumfries are: Austria, China, Chinese Taipei, Croatia, Finland, France, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Türkiye, Ukraine and Wales.

Ireland open their qualification bid in Group B against New Zealand at 8.30pm on Friday, followed by Romania at 12.30pm and Mexico at 7.30pm, both on Saturday, and are represented by Alison Fyfe and John Wilson. The Wales duo play in Group A and are Laura Beever and Gary Coombs and they play Portugal at 8.30pm on Friday and also Lithuania at 12.30pm on Saturday afternoon and then France at 7.30pm that night.


No names required

Gary Coombs and Laura Beever

16 teams have already secured their spot in the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship in Gangneung, Korea in April - Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Italy, United States, Japan, Hungary, Australia, Denmark, Czech Republic, Estonia, Korea and England.

[ritchiebaby]

Loads of results to catch up on here with mixed results for both home nations.

IRELAND - 7-8 loss to New Zealand, 8-7 win over Romania, 13-3 win over Mexico and 5-6 loss against Poland.

WALES (back to their normal colour) - 6-2 win over Portugal, 5-8 loss to Lithuania, 7-8 loss to France, 6-7 loss to Chinese Taipei and 3-4 loss to China.

Tomorrow Ireland play Netherlands at 9am and Latvia at 4pm with 2 wins surely a must in order to reach the top 2 in Group B and reach the qualifying games. The team who could deny them is Poland, who play leaders New Zealand.

Wales play India at 9am tomorrow with no chance of qualifying for later stages.

[ritchiebaby]

It was tough enough up until yesterday, but it got worse today for the home teams.

Ireland lost both their games, 2-9 versus Netherlands and 4-6 against Latvia, to finish a disappointing 5th in Group B. Poland lost their remaining game to join the also-rans..

Wales beat India by 9-5 to finish 5th in Group A, sharing a 2 win/4 loss record with Ireland.

Tomorrow's play-off games at 10am are Austria v China, Netherlands v Finland, New Zealand v Turkiye, France v Spain. There are further play-off games at 3pm (please bear with me here), where the 4 winners from the earlier games will play again (the A-Road), with the 2 winners qualifying for the main event in April. Also at 3pm, the 4 losers from the earlier games will play (the B-Road) and the 2 winners from the B-Road will play the 2 losers from the A-Road on Wednesday at 10am. The 2 winners from these games will also qualify for the main event.

I do apologise if you find this difficult to follow. As an advocate of the principle that if a team is knocked out of a knock-out tournament, then they are out - it's simple. But no, the powers-that-be have got it into their tiny little minds that that scenario is not good enough and that they've got to make it more complicated. If the losers want to play for a Diddy Cup, that's OK with me, but they should not be given the chance to progress in the competition.

[ritchiebaby]

After all the extra play-off games, the qualifiers turned out to be Austria, Netherlands, Spain and Turkiye, the very same teams that won the previous day's legitimate games.

Is the farce of playing the extra games a Scottish thing? If so, I see where the clamour for IndyRef2 comes from.

Imagine the furore if the absurd scenario of England beating France in the World Cup comes to pass    , then France get back in through an extra play-off game, and beat England in the Semi-final.