The two Scottish teams that contested last weekend’s final Grand Slam final of the season are in the field, while the current World Champions are four-time former winners of this event, but none of those are defending the title at the Perth Masters this week.
That honour instead goes to the callow quartet of Team Carson, the four-time Scottish Junior champions, who won in the Dewar’s Centre a year ago on their way to their third World Junior Championship.
This time around the team led by 20-year-old Orrin Carson and is made up of the still teenage trio of his younger brother Logan, Archie Hyslop and Charlie Gibb are readying themselves for their last shot at the World Juniors title together before Orrin ages out and they are naturally excited by the prospect.
“We are heading to the back end of the season now and the Perth Masters is an event we have always enjoyed over the past few years and obviously last year we went on to win it,” said the older Carson brother. 
“We are really looking forward to getting out there and competing against the world’s top teams.”
In the absence of four-time champions, World Champions and World number one ranked Team Mouat, who have completed their competitive preparations for next month’s Winter Olympics, the top two of those in this line up are compatriots Team Whyte and Team Waddell, now ranked fifth and 10th on the planet after their meeting in the final of the Grand Slam season finale at the Players Championship on Sunday.
The way those top Scottish teams are performing on the world stage can only be inspirational for future generations and Team Carson are among the leading beneficiaries of this opportunity to mix with the best in the British Curling programme.
“What a great week it was for Scotland last week with Team Whyte and Waddell in the Players’ Championship final, so we know this will be a great week and hopefully we run into one of those two teams at the back end of the competition,” said Carson.
“This is our last event before the World Juniors at the end of February so we are looking to build some momentum and really find our peak form into what we know will really be an important few weeks for us.”
Whyte’s team has its own World Championship aspirations on the back of that Players’ Championship victory, but with two of their regular line-up – vice skip Robin Brydone and the currently injured Duncan McFadzean – hailing from The Fair City, they know they will be challenged on their return to playing in front of a domestic audience. 
“We’re going into this week feeling pretty confident after what happened last week, but we’ll have a bit of a target on our backs,” said skip Ross Whyte.
“Everyone knows what just happened last weekend, so we’ll enjoy that challenge, knowing that everyone is going to play really well against us, which is what we’ll have to deal with all week and we are looking forward to going in as the top ranked team at this event trying to win our first ever Perth Masters.
“It would mean a lot to the boys, especially Robin and Dunc, if we were to get over the line this week and put our name on a trophy that we’ve been close to winning a couple of times.”
He acknowledged that they have had little time to recover from that emotional high and the travelling that followed, but believes that he and Brydone, along with Craig Waddell and Euan Kyle, will be ready to perform.
“Although it’s a tight turn-around and jet-lag might be a factor, we’ve got to try to put any tiredness aside and look to be clinical and compete well for one more week, because we’ve then got a bit of time with some weekends off,” said Whyte.
“We’ve handled jet-lag many times before, so we’re just trying to get back into a good sleeping pattern and then we’ll get going and try to take it game by game.”
For Craig’s big brother Kyle and his teammates Mark Watt, Angus Bryce and Blair Haswell, there has been the additional element of recovering from that loss in Sunday’s final, but the way they performed across the week, finishing the round-robin stages as number one seeds on their way to that showdown with Whyte, has demonstrated that they are worthy of their position among the world’s top 10.
“It’s a quick turnaround and with our draw we have it will test the jet lag, but we will make sure we are ready to go again as it’s important to continue improving on the things we have been discussing as we head into the Scottish Championships,” said the older Waddell. 
“This will be another good event to get us in the right place as we approach the Scottish.”
While their rise through the ranks has been extraordinary since Team Waddell underwent an overhaul in the summer, these events back on home ice represent their last opportunities to achieve their last remaining target for this 2025/26 campaign
“I’ll be honest, one of our goals for this season is to win an event which we haven’t accomplished, so this is a good chance for us to rock another goal off,” said Waddell.
“If we manage to put another good week together then who knows, we might just find ourselves in a rematch with Team Whyte.
“There are a good few teams playing this weekend though, including a few Olympic teams which is great for the event, so we will need to make sure we are at our top level again this weekend if we want to win.”
Waddell’s 2018 Olympic compatriots Kyle Smith and Glen Muirhead are also skipping teams in the Masters field, which also includes Norway’s 2026 Olympic representatives Team Magnus Ramsfjell and China’s Olympic men’s team led by Xu Xiaoming.
Results from Curling Zone
Images: British Curling - PPA/Graeme Hart
