A GAME OF SUBS

With the two Young Yin’s off skiing, Steve and Kay also unavailable and Keith hors de combat, both teams were requiring subs. Team Deemo stepped up to the mark and fielded Gill and Richard for Team Waterlow while David stood in for both Fiona and Keith. This was all a ploy to keep Deemo’s team ahead of team Tides Out by assisting Team Herd to a win. This was spectacularly successful.

Team Waterlow – Blue, Team Herd – Yellow.

First end saw great stones from Gill, lying on the button alongside Deemo’s first stones. The build-up of stones in the middle of the house was spectacular and was a mark of the following games. DD, playing third for Team W, made a speciality of being slightly off the broom but managing to get a wick off an outlying stone to end in the centre, the wick being exact each performance.

Yellow managed to shift the blues and finish with a two as we had the hammer, good start.

Second end was almost identical, with both colours packing the centre, but blue managing to protect their winning stone to finish one.

Third end finished with a further two for blue.

Fourth end started well with great stones from Deemo, but calls for guards from Billy failed miserably, his stones continuing to finish against other stones on the button. Apparently this is called a Chinese Guard. There was a blue stone cutting the black and frustratingly impossible to remove. A call for a guard from me was slightly too heavy and also finished in the group but left things open for yellow’s stone. This missed and ran straight through. My last stone was a draw, but the sweeping bug caught both Billy and Deemo and it finished too far back to negate the blue. Yellow finished with a respectable four.

Next end finished with yellow lying two. A comfortable lead, could it be retained?

Sixth end saw blue lying on the button and protected and attempts to remove it were unsuccessful. With it almost impossible to access the button due to a crowd of yellows, John had to burn his last stone and finish with a one.

Seventh and last end had yellow lying on the button but with two blues sitting hard on it courtesy of DD and his special wicks. Guards were the order of the day and duly removed. There was a clear route in for blue to move something, but a perfect guard from me plugged the gap leaving John with a difficult shot. He went for an all-or-nothing shot, the big blooter and hoped for something good. Unsuccessful!   I couldn’t improve on the situation so didn’t take my last stone.

John very sportingly did not impose the penalty points. (Just for the sake of clarity this was because as the club rules state:  “…best efforts were made by that team to find a substitute but were unable to do so”. JW)

Kind regards

Ken.

Still trading blows but level pegging so far

Last week was a victory for Team Deemo, but this time it was Team Waterlow’s turn to take the honours. The squads have met four times so far this season and no-one has emerged as the dominant team.  Each has won two games and lost two games.  With only one more meeting to take place (in early March) which team will prevail?

Team Deemo had their usual line-up; Team Waterlow welcomed supersub Bob into the fold as a replacement for Kay while Steve was on stand-down/otherwise engaged.

For two teams so evenly balanced in skills and experience, at 9-4 to Team W, the final result looks more one-sided than it felt at the time.  Team W certainly felt the pressure on every end, even though they triumphed in six out of the seven ends played.  Both sides had their unforced (and forced) errors but this time around, Team Deemo were just a fraction less successful than usual with the hammer.

The exception was the third end.  Team Deemo were building up their yellow stones in the house but left an unguarded port through which skip Waterlow was able to knock out a yellow and lie. But it too remained unguarded so in a fine piece of tit-for-tat, Deemo’s last stone followed the same path, knocking out the blue for an excellent four stone score.

But that was it.  Team Deemo were unable to capitalise on that big end and couldn’t add anything further to their score.  More than once, Team W felt they might be in trouble but both teams were struggling with ice that wasn’t giving the stones much swing which resulted errant attempted take-outs.

So on this occasion, the pendulum has swung in Team W’s favour.  Where will it go next time?

John.