A Grand Day Out

As the day of the Indoor Grand Match rolled round, our gallant boys and girl set off to their various venues.

Simon Kesley, Andy Aberdein, Karen Monro and Stephen Dyer set off for an early start in Kirkcaldy.
As per the warnings, after Murrayfield's (relatively) quick ice they took a couple of ends to get the idea that nothing short of a 'full strike' would reach the hog line. Never the less they contained the first two end losses to singles and then stuck back with two singles of their own.  Fortified by the half time 'stacking of brooms' (whiskies), they then went on to take three of the remaining four ends with twos while only losing a further single.
Final scores South of Scotland (Haddington) 8 - North of Scotland (Coupar) 3.
It was great to see that Karen took the trouble to borrow her fathers clothes to turn out in a Haddington strip.  If you think the jacket in the photo looks a bit large, I am assured that the T-shirt was even larger.

Meanwhile, with a slightly later departure, Graeme and Dave Wyllie set off for Aberdeen, along with Vic Williams who was borrowed from the Surveyors.  After a very wet drive they were introduced to their fourth member Ian, who was borrowed from Aberdeen curling club.  It was handy to have some local knowledge but we refused the North's requests that a quarter of our score should be returned to them for his participation..
Unlike Kirkcaldy, our team struggled with the faster ice while the opposition, Turriff, were on their weight from the start, taking, singles in the first two ends.  The comeback started in the third end with Graeme erring on the heavy side, so as not to disturb our scoring stones and missing his draw and only taking a 3 and the lead.  The comeback didn't last too long though and a loose end resulted in a loss of 4 and a 6-3 deficit at mid point.  Fortified by the mid game whisky, we moved into a striking game which paid off leaving a clear house for our last stone.  Graeme tactically (some say missed) played through the back to blank the end and retain the hammer.  At this stage it suddenly all came together and the skip made two difficult draws (probably the best I have played all season) to take a 3 and tie the game going in to the last end.  It was still up for grabs when Graeme played his last stone, a difficult draw, which would have been almost impossibly to dislodge, unfortunately his luck had been used up the previous end and the stone just scuffed a guard and left the opposition a draw for 4.
Final score  10 - 6 against.

For the record the South of Scotland won the overall Grand Match, for the fourth time (out of 4) with a total score of 2154 to 1928 .

Roll on 2020.