A New Year and new rules. With the Omicron variant of Covid running rampant through the land we are lucky that curling has been permitted to continue after the holidays. However, it is conditional on stricter precautions, the most notable being that we are limited to one sweeper at a time taking turns while the opposing team are not allowed to sweep their opponents’ stone out of the house. This latter measure is a particular source of frustration – it’s amazing just how difficult it is for skips and thirds to restrain themselves to remaining behind the hack.
For this game Covid was also impacting on team numbers. Although Team Kinnaird was fortunate to have Steve Laux freshly back from quarantine, Keith Walker was still in solitary and despite everyone’s best efforts, no sub could be found. So then there were three. Fortunately though, Team Auld remained happy and healthy at full strength.
It may be somewhat of a cliché but the final result, at 10 points to three in favour of Team Kinnaird, was not perhaps an entirely fair reflection of the relative performances of the protaganists. Indeed, a feature of the game was skip Auld’s prowess at the promotion of stones, with him showing unerring accuracy albeit perhaps not always at the ideal weight.
Indeed, shot of the night, if not the season, came in the middle of the game (your reporter is struggling to recall exactly which end). Alice was comfortably lying three blue stones to the good in the centre and benefitting from a wall of stones in front by way of protection. But in a do-or-die attempt, Dougie sent a stone rattling down the rink into his only yellow in the wall which in turn cannoned into the centre to send the blues flying and leaving him lying one. Oh for a video replay. The only slight dampener on the glory came with Alice’s next shot, an attempted draw down the margins of the sheet which even she would admit saw a lucky bounce to beat Dougie’s stone.
But despite the derring-do from Team Auld, including another couple of fine tap-ups from their skip, the match slipped away from them after the fourth end. Until then it had been pretty much even-stevens, but Team Kinnaird’s steady performance more than outweighed any fireworks from the opposition. Each of the subsequent ends resulted in three points for Team Kinnaird to give them another boost in the league following their slow start to the season.
John W.
Holyrood Curling Club 