Entry forms are available for the ECA National and Mixed Championships. Please contact the Competitions Convenor Phil Barton (pb@starleyhall.co.uk) or John Brown the secretary (jmbroons@ntlworld.com) or your own club secretary.

Dates are:

National Championships, Greenacres Curling Club between the 5th and 8th February 2009.

Mixed Championships, Fenton’s Rink between the 27th February and 1st March 2009.

CLOSING DATE FOR ENTRIES - 30th NOVEMBER 2008

Eligibility Rules can be seen here

England’s Mixed Champions have been playing in the European Mixed Championships this last week. Unfortunately the awful summer weather had an impact in the team when the second player, Andrew Reed, a farmer from near Berwick upon Tweed had to pull out of the team owing to the difficulties he had had with harvesting and with sowing his winter crops.

John Sharp was able to stand in at the last minute and the team (Alan MacDougall, Lana Watson, John and Suzie Law) flew out to Kitzbuhel hoping to better their performance of 3 wins and 3 losses from last year.

Their first game was against last year’s silver medallists from Denmark and this was a close game with the Danes finally winning by stealing a single at the last end. Picture of Alan’s last stone can be seen here
In the second game against Estonia England raced to a 5-0 lead after 2 ends and cruised on to win 10-4 after 7 ends.

Day 2 brought an early win against Netherlands by 7-2 and then in the evening a match against the fancied and unbeaten Russians. This was 5-5 after 6 ends and still 5-5 after 8, the Russians having failed to utilise their last stone advantage, though they eventually did so at the extra end to win 7-5.

Even now after just 4 games, with a record of 2-2, England were teetering on the edge of elimination. They had lost to the two strongest teams in the section, Denmark and Russian and now needed other weaker teams to help them out by surprising one of the top 2. However it was not to be and a further defeat by Hungary (3-8) finally eliminated England from any chance of qualifying for the play-offs.

Two straightforward wins against Spain (14-0) and Serbia (13-1) were scant consolation for their exit.

A further picture of Alan can be seen here

The ECA Senior Championships on 8th and 9th November will now be held at Fenton’s Rink in Kent. The closing date for entries has been extended to September 12th.

Entry forms are now available for the ECA National Senior (over 50) and Mixed Doubles Championships.

The Seniors will be played at Murrayfield Curling Club on the weekend of the 7th to 9th November and the winners will represent England in the World Senior Championships in New Zealand in April / May 2009.

The Mixed Doubles will be played at the Border Ice Rink, Kelso on the weekend of the 11th / 12th October and the winners will represent England in the World Championships in Cortina, Italy in April 2009.

 ENTRIES CLOSE ON 31st AUGUST
Seniors entry form

Mixed Doubles entry form

Athlete Registration of Interest

British Curling (BC) are seeking a registration of interest from athletes who wish to be considered for the World University Games, representing Great Britain in Harbin, China, February, 2009. An athlete information pack is available which covers the BC selection process, timelines and BUCS eligibility for Harbin 2009. The information packs can be obtained by contacting:

Paula Jarvie

BC Admin Support

Scottish Institute of Sport

Airthrey Road

Stirling

FK9 5PH

Tel. 01786 460105

E-mail paula.jarvie@sisport.com

Only athletes who are eligible for the Great Britain Team and with a genuine aspiration and realistic ability to compete in the medal zone at the World University Games 2009 should return a registration of interest.

The closing date for applications is the 30^th April, 2008.

England’s teams at the World Senior and World Mixed Doubles Championships in Finland had mixed fortunes.

The Senior Men - Michael Sutherland, John Brown, John MacDougall and Robin Gemmell finished up with 4 wins and 4 losses which translated into an overall position of 9th out of the 18 teams competing. This equalled their performance last season, when there were fewer teams playing.

They recorded wins over Norway (5-1), Iceland (8-5), New Zealand (9-6) and Italy (8-6) but lost to Ireland (5-6 after an extra end), Finland (6-7), USA (3-6) and Scotland (2-10).

The Senior Ladies (Glynnice Lauder, Venetia Scott, Joan Reed and Moira Davision) recorded their worst finishing position in the 6 years that they have participated when they ended up 9th out of the 10 teams with only 2 wins, over Japan (12-4) and New Zealand.

In the new discipline of Mixed Doubles there were 28 nations participating and for England’s new representatives, Steve Amann and Jane Clark it was a baptism of fire with their first game coming against Canada, which resulted in a 3-11 defeat. Further defeats against Hungary (2-9), Italy (3-11), Slovakia (5-8) and Sweden (1-12), plus a forfeited game against the USA when Steve was too ill to play, were assuaged by a win over Estonia by 7-5.
The Championships were struck by a variety of illnesses which affected nearly every country in one form or another.

Alan MacDougall and his team of Lana Watson, Andrew Reed and Suzie Law retained their English Mixed title at Fenton’s Rink in Kent.

There were 4 entries this year compared to 2 last year and a single round robin was played to determine the top 2 for the final.

MacDougall won all 3 of his games and was joined in the final by Nigel Patrick and his team of Alison Hemmings, Ken Maxwell and Jane Clark who had won 2 of their three games.

This newly formed team had squeezed into the final at the last stone of their last round robin game against Susan Young.

The final was close for the first few ends until MacDougall pulled away to win 8-3 after 7 ends.

The team now go forward to represent England in the European Mixed in Austria in September.

Alan MacDougall 9 Susan Young 2
Nigel Patrick 12 John Brown 1
Alan MacDougall 8 Nigel Patrick 3
John Brown 10 Susan Young 8
Alan MacDougall 10 John Brown 2
Nigel Patrick 6 Susan Young 5

Alan MacDougall 8 Nigel Patrick 3

Andrew Reed and Kirsty Balfour retained their respective titles at the English Curling Championships held at Fentons’ Rink in Kent between 30th January and 3rd February.

Balfour held off a strong challenge from a local team skipped by Suzie Law to take the 5 game rubber by 3 games to 1.

Results:

Balfour 10, Law 2

Balfour 9, Law 4

Law 12, Balfour 8

Balfour 9, Law 6

Winning team: Kirsty Balfour, Caroline Reed, Claire Grimwood, Sarah McVey

The men’s Championships needed a play-off to decide the winner. Going into the last round of games both Reed and Phil Atherton were on 1 defeat, Reed having seen off the challenge of Michael Opel the previous day. A victory for both teams would mean a playoff, but a defeat for both teams would mean that Opel’s record of 5 wins and 2 defeats would entitle him to a part in the play-off also.

Half way through the last session things seemed to be on Atherton’s side - leading Sam Fowler narrowly he was in a better position than Reed who had seen his opponent Bruce Bowyer blank the first 4 ends and then score a total of 5 in ends 5 and 6.

However, Reed had been in similar positions, though maybe not quite so dire, throughout the competition and he fought back to be lying all square before Bowyer’s last stone. There was a choice between a draw to the 8 foot or a strike on the wing. The latter was chosen but the shooter rolled out and Reed breathed again as Atherton had completed a close victory over Fowler by 6-4 and now had to sit and wait for the drama of the extra end to unfold.

A super tap up by Reed with his last stone left Bowyer facing a raised tap back but his stone ran wide and Reed had the win he needed to go into a play-off.

The play-off was really all about Reed as he built up a 7-1 lead and although Atherton fought back to 7-5, he was unable to get any closer and Reed eventually won by 9-5.

Winning team: Andrew Reed, James Dixon, Tom Jaeggi, Andrew Dixon

Apologies for the delay in getting these results online:

For full reports check out English Curling Form website www.englishcurlingforum.com

MEN

Current standings

Phil Atherton won 5 Lost 1

Andrew Reed 5-1

Michael Opel 4-2

Jamie Malton 3-3

Bruce Bowyer 3-3

Andy Woolston 2-4

Neil Maycock 2 - 5

Sam Fowler 0 - 5 

SCORES

Jamie Malton 8 Michael Opel 4

Neil Maycock 10 Andy Woolston 9

Bruce Bowyer 13 Sam Fowler 4

Phil Atherton 7 Andrew Reed 6 (extra end)

Andy Woolston 10 Jamie Malton 7

Bruce Bowyer 15 Neil Maycock 7

Jamie Malton 9 Bruce Bowyer 8

Michael Opel 10 Phil Atherton 8

Andrew Reed 12 Sam Fowler 2

Andrew Reed 17 Neil Maycock 2

Michael Opel 13 Sam Fowler 2

Phil Atherton 11 Andy Woolston 1

Michael Opel 9 Bruce Bowyer 3

Jamie Malton 11 Neil Maycock 4

Andy Woolston 8 Sam Fowler 7

Andrew Reed 6 Andy Woolston 5

Phil Atherton 10 Jamie Malton 7

Michael Opel 10 Neil Maycock 3

Phil Atherton 10 Bruce Bowyer 9

Neil Maycock 6 Sam Fowler 4

Andrew Reed 9 Jamie Malton 6

Bruce Bowyer 7 Andy Woolston 6

Andrew Reed 10 Michael Opel 9

Phil Atherton 11 Neil Maycock 4

LADIES

Kirsty Balfour 10 Suzie Law 2

Kirsty Balfour 9 Suzie Law 4

Suzie Law 12 Kirsty Balfour 8

It was a disappointing 4 Nations weekend for England when they failed to win any of the 4 trophies for which they were competing. The full results can be found here: 4 Nations Results 2008

The competition was played at Greenacres Curling Club in Scotland and was organised by the Welsh Curling Association who also introduced a wheelchair competition. Unfortunately niether Ireland nor England were able to field a wheelchair team and so Scotland and Wales played out a series of friendly games.

This was the first time that the 4 Nations had been played at Greenacres and the teams were given a warm welcome and partook of a very good carvery on the Saturday evening followed by a friendly quiz.

An incomplete set of historical results between the four countries can be found here: 4 Nations Records Anyone who can fill in the missing information is invited to contact us through this website.