With one day’s play left ahead of the play-offs at The Hardie Engineering Scottish Curling Championships, this season’s form teams are set for key games to decide which of them head into the final directly and who must negotiate a semi-final.
The final matches in the round-robin stage of the women’s event will see Fay Henderson’s defending champions and Rebecca Morrison’s champions of the previous two years take 100 per cent records into their decisive match after both enjoyed comfortable wins in the penultimate round.
After a blanked opening end, Team Henderson asserted themselves with a four in the next against Team Smith and after forcing their opponents, another four at the fourth effectively ended the contest as they went on to win 9-3. 
Team Morrison meanwhile opened up with a three before stealing at the next two ends to move into a 5-0 lead over Team Leigh on their way to a 7-2 win.
However, there is an awareness that they are now getting to the business end of the event.
“It’s great to have four wins on the board so far but not only that, we are playing really well and putting our stones in good positions so that gives us a lot of confidence going into the tail end of this week,” said Rebecca Morrison.
“We’re just taking this week one game at a time, so just looking to go into tomorrow feeling well and playing well and however Friday looks we’ll take it in our stride.”
The loser in their round-robin meeting looks likeliest to face a semi-final meeting with Laura Watt’s juniors, who are the only other quartet to have won more than one match and take on winless Team Smith.
With more teams in the men’s event, the top four teams will contest the semis with only defending champions Team Whyte assured of a place heading into the final day’s round-robin play.
Having registered a 10-4 win over Team Bryce earlier in the day, an 8-3 victory for Ross Whyte, Robin Brydone, Duncan McFadzean and Euan Kyle in their re-match of last year’s final with James Craik, Mark Watt, Angus Bryce and Blair Haswell maintained their 100 per cent record.
World number one ranked Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan also looked set to retain their unbeaten record after beating Team Cameron 8-0 in their first match of the penultimate day before then moving into a 5-2 lead over Team Bryce after six ends, only for a rare lapse to see them concede steals of one at the ninth end and three at the last as they suffered a 7-5 loss.
Mouat’s men now face both the 2024 finalists, needing to win one of those matches to be sure of their semi-final spot. 
Team Bryce’s win kept their play-off hopes alive, while with a record of four wins and two losses, Orrin Carson’s three-time Scottish Junior champions must win one of their last two matches to reach the play-offs as they prepare to play Whyte’s men and then what could be a winner take all match against the team skipped by 2018 Olympian Kyle Waddell, who currently have three wins and four losses.
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Images: PPA / Graeme Hart
