Scotland’s Team Morrison powered their way into the gold medal match after claiming a dominant 8 – 5 win over Switzerland in their semi final at the Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships in Finland.
A brilliantly executed team performance saw the Scottish quartet of Rebecca Morrison, Jen Dodds, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson guarantee themselves an upgrade on the bronze medal they won last year in the same venue.
That semi-final victory followed what was another must win game earlier in the day in their final round robin match against Germany, the Scots heading into that game knowing that qualification to next year’s World Championship was dependent on a successful outcome. 
As they did so their chance of reaching the play-offs looked remote, but the alignment of a perfect sequence of results elsewhere conspired to ensure they would also progress to the play-off stages of the championships.
“Reaching our first European final together and that is a great achievement for us,” said an excited Jen Dodds, who won Euro gold with her previous teammates in 2021, before they went on to win the Winter Olympic gold in the same season.
“We got our bronze medal last year, which back then we were so happy with and one of our goals for this season was to upgrade that and get to the final.
“Now we are really looking forward to getting that opportunity to compete in it.”
The principal focus going into the meeting with Germany had actually been to ensure that Scotland finished in the top seven in the competition in order to qualify for this season’s World Championships.
However, there were echoes of the way Dodds became an Olympic champion in 2022 in the way they then found a way to get through to the knockout stages, that success in Beijing also having come only after results in other matches went Team GB’s way in the final tranche of round-robin matches.
“I think we just like to do it the hard way and qualifying with a 5-4 record we were fortunate to finish third with a 5 and 4 record,” she acknowledged.
“I don’t think that has been done many times before, but in our last couple of games we found some real momentum and I think that was a game changer for us. 
“We just relaxed a little and let things flow and found our rhythm after what was a roller coaster week.
“Out of all the scenarios we were dependent on today, fortunately it all went the right way for us.
“I didn’t actually realise the Czechs had won until we had finished our game when we approached the coaches bench and they told us we were waiting on one more win elsewhere for us to get through, so it was a mad twenty minutes or so.
“We went from having a shot against Germany to get us into the Worlds, to getting a spot in the European final in about just over 12 hours, so it’s been a very turbulent day, but we thrive under this kind of pressure and I think we have shown that today.”
Dodds also paid particular tribute to skip Sophie Jackson, whose personal pain in the latter stages of the competition has provided all of the team with extra determination to support her.
“Sophie has done an amazing job this week with her granddad passing while she was out here which was obviously devastating for her,” she said.
“Consequently we are now all going to try really hard to win that gold for her and her granddad and we will do our best to honour that.”
They now go into the final against top seeds and 2018 Olympic Champions Sweden believing they have every chance of taking the title. 
“I think our game tonight showed that we can pick up our performances when we need to and you always want to play better in the play-offs and we definitely did that tonight,” said Dodds.
“That Swiss line-up are a very strong team, new on to the championships scene, so we knew we needed to raise our game from the round robin when we played them before.
“This is now where we want to be – you want to be in the finals on a Saturday.
“Again it is one game and we are playing for ourselves and we will just go out like we have over the last couple of games and stay relaxed.
“We have shown that is when we play our best, so we will represent Scotland the way we want to and be proud to have Scotland on our backs and it just feels great and exciting to be starting that campaign for gold on Saturday.”
Watch live games on The Curling Channel
Selected games will be available on the BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport online, as follows:
Men’s Semi Final
Scotland men v Sweden - 07.00 GMT - Friday 28 November
Women’s Final
Scotland women v Sweden -08.00 GMT – Saturday 29 November
Team Mouat
Bruce Mouat (Skip)
Grant Hardie
Bobby Lammie
Hammy McMillan
Kyle Waddell (alternate)
Team Morrison
Rebecca Morrison
Jen Dodds
Sophie Sinclair
Sophie Jackson (Skip)
Fay Henderson (alternate)
Images: Scottish Curling
