Double Dutch

This was, to pulverise a football euphemism, a game of three halves. We played very well to establish a three shot lead and had the Dutch skip not played a perfect freeze at the third it could have been five. But then we played the fourth poorly. One story would be three missed shots including a very rare last shot strike miss from Jamie - half an inch less ice (this is curling talk for the uninitiated) and the story would be different. Another story might be tactics being slightly aggressive. Whatever the story, as said in the earlier post, one that got away.

So to the fifth all square. The Dutch were dictating tactics and established two stones either side of the house. We had last stone. We were heavy with the draw to the four foot circle. Into the half time break with the Dutch with a two shot lead.

End six and lady luck cast her (this time) vicious hand. Already facing some Dutch stones, Michael's first caught a piece of dirt on the ice and headed towards Ailsa Craig in fright. Dutch had a chance to guard. We made little impact with our next. Jamie faced three guarded Dutch stones with his first and still managed to remove three. However, it came to a draw and this time light. Three more to the Dutch and an uphill struggle was recognised.

We are fighters not quitters. Much better play and we edged back with singles at 7 and 8. The Dutch skip produced some magic to edge us out of what looked like another steal at 9 and took one. Probably by now more cussed than likely winners we nevertheless went after four in the last but were run out of stones.

Bottoms and pants. We finished third in group B1 which means no prizes. It does mean no relegation to the new qualifying round but we were arrogant enough not to have feared that. It also means beer. For the first time in several weeks. There is also the small matter of the "Losers' Party" - I like parties but, goodness, how I did not want to go to a party for "Losers".