Spot the Holyrood curler (hint – there are four of them)

Holyrood Curling Club took part in the Jackson Trophy celebratory bonspiel held at Curl Edinburgh on Saturday 20th January 2024.

This is an annual Champion of Champions event, with a magnificent trophy donated in honour of one of Scotland’s greatest ever curlers, W K Jackson. All of the previous season’s Edinburgh Curling Club competition winners are invited to take part. But for the 2024 edition Curl Edinburgh were hosting a large bonspiel to celebrate 100 years since Jackson skipped his team to the first Winter Olympic gold medal in 1924.

William Kilgour Jackson (14 March 1871 – 26 January 1955) was the skip of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club team which won the first Olympic Gold medal in curling at the inaugural Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, in 1924.

Holyrood Curling Club was invited to enter a team because of the club’s special connections to W K Jackson’s Olympic winning team.  One of that team was Robin Welsh who was a member of Holyrood CC at the time.  Indeed, the Welsh family were stalwarts of Holyrood CC for many years – an examination of Holyrood records shows the name appearing repeatedly.  The record also shows that W K Jackson himself must have been a member of the Club as payments of annual subscriptions of seven shillings and six pence are recorded against his name around that period.

With fourteen teams entering the competition, this year’s event consisted of three rounds of six-end games, with lunch between games two and three, and a presentation after the third game. Curling started at 10am and the formal event was completed by 5pm.

It was not without some trepidation that we entered the competition.  Whilst being honoured to be invited because of the Club’s historic connections, we knew we would be up against some of the strongest club curlers in Scotland. 

Holyrood’s stalwart team comprised Ken at lead, Dougie second, David playing third, and John skipping.  Fuelled with the free coffee (our pre-match nerves prevented us from tackling the bacon rolls) and the group photograph taken, play commenced pretty much on time.

Our worst fears were never realised. We had a very enjoyable day and played well.  We were pleased to win won one of our three games and while we lost the other two, the defeats were honourable and we kept our opponents honest.

A model of curling concentration

Results:

• We lost the first game against Team Neilson (Aileen Neilson, Michael McCreadie, Hugh Neilson, Andrew Neilson).  Two of this team were wheelchair curlers – Aileen Nielson and Michael McCreadie are both Olympic medal-winning Paralympians.  It took a while settle our nerves and our opponents took the first few ends.  However, as we settled in to the game, we came back in the second half to finish 6-3 down.  
• The second game resulted in a fine win against Team Biggar (Andrew Clark, Tom Shearer, Billy Buchanan, Graeme Barrie). This was close fought game against a very experienced team but we held our nerves.

• The final game was a loss to Team Oxenford 2 (Callum Harvey, Bill Gray, Jimmy Muir, Robert Waddell).  This was a very strong team and the result was less close than we would have liked – perhaps we were tiring by then.  Playing in three six-end matches throughout the day certainly took its toll. The sweeping members of the team thoroughly deserved their lazy Sunday after Saturday’s exertions.

Almost as stylish as Raeburn’s Skating Minister