Karlstad B Division Summary

Now that the final games have been played in the B Division group, it is time to reflect and summarise who goes up and who goes down.

The first group to be decided was the Blue Group for the men where the teams that were to qualify for the play-offs had been decided before the last round of games - Netherlands and Latvia then finished with wins over Poland and Lithuania respectively and because Latvia had beaten the Netherlands in their match earlier in the week they finished top of the group with 6 wins and 1 loss, the same record as the Netherlands. Third in the group were Croatia on 4 wins, then Belgium (4 wins), Poland (3 wins), Austria (2 wins), Lithuania (2 wins) and finally Ireland (1 win).The Irish win ironically came over Group winners Latvia but the final ranking relegates them to the C Division next year.

They were followed by the women where Norway were already clear group winners on 8 points. Estonia had also qualified on 6 points before the last session and faced Turkey who had to win to get themselves into a tie break situation. Austria and Latvia were both on 5 wins at this stage and were playing against each other, the winner would qualify and the loser could face a tie breaker if Turkey won.

At the bottom there were a number of possibilities, depending on Belarus' fate against Poland combined with England's result against Norway. Basically if Belarus lost then they would be relegated to division C along with the loser of the Spain v Slovakia game. If Belarus beat Poland and England lost to Norway then there would be 4 teams tied on 3 wins from which one would need to be found for the second relegation place. The 4 teams would be England, Belarus, Poland and the winner of Spain v Slovakia.If England beat Norway then it would be the other 3 teams going for one place.

For England this was an improvement on the position going into the last end of the previous (penultimate) session when they were losing to Turkey and Belarus were up on Latvia. If that had stayed as the situation then England were doomed along with the loser of the Spain v Slovakia game today. Fortunately for England the Turkish skip hogged both her draws at the last end and Latvia also scored 2 to beat Belarus, thus setting up the situation described above.

The first issue to be decided today was Slovakia's relegation to the C Division when they lost to Spain by 8-3. England then lost to Norway by 4-9 and they and Spain had to sit and sweat for 2 ends while Belarus came back against Poland. In the end Poland held on to win 7-4, Belarus were relegated to the C group and, as so often happens in these situations, when it all settled down there were no tie breakers needed after all.

At the top Estonia beat Turkey 12-5 to finish second and will play Norway in the Page 1v2 play-off while Austria and Latvia will repeat their game from today, (when Latvia won at an extra end) in the 3 v 4 play-off.

In the Red Group for the men, Finland finished on top with just the one defeat by England who finished tied for second with Italy and will play a tie break. At the bottom of the Group, the unfortunate Welsh team will join Ireland in the C Group. With the relegation of the Welsh and Irish women last year, it means that just the English teams are still in the B Group.