And yet again, back to Greenacres

The third stage of my Scottish Curling Tour took me back to Greenacres at the weekend for the Gormac International where a full field of 24 teams took to the ice over the weekend. The teams were from all parts and of all ages and the quality was high.

From Ireland there were the World Senior Champions, though they were missing Bill Gray this weekend and skip JohnJo Kenny was also not available full time, and also there was the team which will be going to the European Championships next month.

From England there were two of the teams who would be playing in the National Championships in February trying out their new line-ups, plus our Senior team skipped by John Sharp, having its last warm-up before the English Senior Championships in three weeks' time.

From Poland we had a team of ladies joined by honorary Pole, Mark Callan, and from Scotland we had a whole host of teams getting in some ice time before their various Championships - Graeme Adam and Ken Horton's senior men, Christine Cannon's senior (and not quite senior) women, Ross McCleary's men and Gina Aitken's juniors, plus loads of local and not-so-local well kent faces such as Graham McIntyre, Graham Shedden, Alan Hannah, Fergus Corbett, Kate Adams, John McCall et al and apologies if I have missed your name off the list.

Action began on the Friday night with the first games at 1815 followed by stovies for all and the Calcutta bidding. Over £2500 was bid for the 24 teams with the highest price going on Ken Horton's team which went for £280 to Gordon McIntyre. I was pleased that our team went for £100 and thanks to John Summers for bidding so high - since we then won him some money by finishing 6th, I reckon that is worth a drink or two when we meet up again!!!

There were 4 games played across a Schenkel and then the top three in each won through to a final. Both sections were close in the end. The Blue section saw Ken Horton come out on top, but only by a matter of shots as the top 4 teams all finished on 3 wins and 18 ends!! It was a sensational finish as it looked for all the world that Ken would beat Graham Shedden in their last round match but a mistake by Kenny gave the win to Graham and brought him back into the reckoning, dropping Greg Dunn from London down to 4th and out of the money, much to the chagrin of Graeame Adam who had bought his team in the Calcutta.

Graham Shedden thus finished second with Graham McIntyre third and Greg Dunn 4th.

In the Red Section John Sharp was top after 3 games but Ross McCleary and Graeme Adam had tied their Saturday game and so were lurking on 5 points (separated by 1 end) with 3 other teams on 4 points who could also qualify by winning their last game. Graeme Adam eliminated one of them. Matthew McConnell, by winning while Ross McCleary defeated John Sharp to put himself top of the section with Graeme second. John Sharp did enough to qualify third by winning three ends in this defeat as in the match between the other contenders Peter Dagen and Fergus Corbett, Peter and his team (who had fewer ends than Fergus) produced an astounding performance of shot play to win but they did not have quite enough ends from previous games to go above John Sharp.

The main final between Ken Horton and Ross McCleary had a storming start as Ross scored a 4 at the first end to set Ken onto the back foot but how well Ken and his team of Bob Kelly, Tom Pendreigh and Greig Henderson responded and by 4 ends they were all square. The tense game went down to the last couple of stones in the 8th end but Ken held on to win narrowly to cap a great comeback and to earn for his "owner", Gordon McIntyre, a little over £600. Gordon had also bought Graeme Adam in the Calcutta and so saw his winnings increased as Graeme won the B final, while Graeme himself had bought Graham McIntyre's team who won the C Final, defeating yours truly (skipping while John Sharp had a game out).

Another great weekend of competition at Greenacres. well organised and run by Richard, Elma and her team who have now got the Province Championships to look forward to this weekend! It has been a really busy time for them all since the end of October and it is only when you go back there regularly for weekend competitions or events like the European Invitation Seniors that you really see how hard they all work to make it a great time for the participants and supporters. I will be back there again in late November for the ECA Seniors but tomorrow sees the start of leg 4 of my tour with the Braehead Mixed Doubles at ........Braehead (not Greenacres!!)