And Not Forgetting the Juniors!

Well, Copey has done his bit about the Seniors (see Behind the Glass) so I thought I would bring a bit of balance by posting from here in Copenhagen about the European Junior Challenge.

It is always a pleasure to come to Taarnby, though today’s flight was a bit on the bumpy side both taking off and landing! I arrived in time to find Italy’s girls blanking their fourth successive end against our English girls to make the score 1-1 after six ends. The tactic worked as they then got their two at the seventh but an overthrown take-out by the Italian skip enabled Anna Fowler to draw for two at the eighth and send the game into an extra end. Unfortunately Anna’s last draw came up short and Italy won without playing their last stone. This was the English girls’ first defeat after three victories and so they are still well in the hunt. It was also a pretty quick game as they finished the nine ends while other games were still in the seventh!

As I write they are playing the undefeated home team who have looked impressive so far. (Currently it is 2-2 after 5 ends).

Three teams qualify for the play-offs in the girls’ event with one semifinal and then a final. Even if they lose to Denmark, if England can avoid defeat in their next three games against Germany, Poland and Estonia, then a play-off place is a definite. Those will not be easy games but Anna Fowler’s experience from playing in the Europeans in Moscow will be a big help.

One of the surprises so far in the girls’ competition has been the poor form of the Polish team, three of whom recently did so well in Moscow. One of those missing is the third, Magda Straczek, and it is obvious that she was one of the strengths of the team in Moscow as here they have lost their first four games.

Another country struggling this year is Germany, with a new team to the Championships, who are also without a win after three games. Unusually this year there is no team who played in the World Championships last year as France who were relegated have not entered, but there are still nine girls’ teams as Hungary have entered for the first time since 2007.

While England’s girls have played four games already and are playing their fifth, the boys have just played two – a smaller group and an early bye have brought this about. Their first game against Russia was a low scoring affair with a three for Russia the only thing really separating the teams.

Earlier today they played Latvia and, in spite of a bad start and being three down after two ends, they fought back well and ran the Latvians out of stones at the last end to win 7-4.

There are two groups of boys’ teams, one of eight teams and one of seven. In the group of eight there is a definite split occurring as four teams have won three games and four teams have won none.

One of those on three wins is Estonia, skipped for the fifth time at this level by Harri Lill, who is turning into the king of the extra end! Two of his three wins here have been after an extra, to add to three out of seven that he played at the Europeans in Moscow, though he only won one of those. The other form teams in that group are Spain, Germany and Italy.

Unfortunately I am only here for the day, unless of course the winds get up again later, but you can follow all the news and scores at www.ejcc2012.com.

Czech and Norwegian Juniors for Perth

It started at 8 am and finished just a shade after 7 pm and in another extraordinary day at the curling club in Prague the local boys team skipped by Lukas Klima climbed back from the depths of despair yesterday morning after losing to Germany and seeming to be out of the competition only to be rescued by Austria beating Italy, to win the European Junior Challenge and the last place in the World Junior Championships in Perth in March. To do so they had to play and win four hard games of curling – beating Italy 8-5 after an extra end, Poland 6-4, by means of a three at the last end, Estonia 6-5, having to repel a great fightback, and Russia by 8-4 as a result of a four scored at the sixth end through a double take out by the skip.

In contrast the Norwegian girls skipped by Kristine Davanger and including Pia Trulsen (two Olympic gold medal winners’ daughters) had it easy as they only had to beat Italy 5-4 and Germany 6-4!

As for the English teams, the girls finished sixth in the final rankings on 3 wins and 5 losses while the boys were fifth in their group just ahead of Wales, both teams on 1 win and 5 losses. Overall this equated to ninth for England and twelth for Wales based on comparative draw shot challenge distances against the other group.

And now it is time to party.......alcohol free of course!

You can find all the results and standings on the event website here.

An extraordinary afternoon in Prague

An apology and an update from Prague

Apologies to Russian and Estonian readers as I was wrong in my assertion that Netherlands had already qualified for the semi-finals of the Junior Men’s Challenge here in Prague in my piece last night. I had ignored the one possible option which ultimately came to pass and saw the three teams finish on 5-1 records. Today Russia beat Netherlands and Estonia won both their games, easily against England by 11-1, and against Slovakia by 6-2. This brought the Draw Shot Challenge into play to decide who had automatically qualified. Before Estonia’s last game – they were one session behind - their DSC distance was 30.5cm while Russia’s final DSC was 39.6 and Netherlands was 45.1. So For Harri Lill, the Estonian skip, there were two challenges in his final game – mainly to beat Slovakia but also to ensure his last stone draw before the game was closer than 75.8cm to the centre, which would keep his DSC distance below Russia’s and give him direct entry to the semi-final and make Russia play the Netherlands again. The first part he completed in style by covering the hole for the second game in a row and then he played a fairly clinical game to earn that place in the semi-final. So first thing tomorrow morning Russia will try and repeat their victory over Netherlands.

In the other group Germany qualified by beating the host nation in the morning session and then the stage was set for a remarkable finish to the round robin play in the final session. The one basic outcome was that if Italy beat Austria they would qualify top as they had beaten the Germans way back in the very first session of play and no tie breakers would be needed. As the session progressed Italy were 5-2 up on Austria and Poland were similarly edging ahead of France. But then things changed and Austria came back to 5-5 going into the last end (Italy had last stone) while Poland led France 5-3 and were lying first and third shots when their skip went to play his last stone of the game – and lo and behold he jammed the French stone he was trying to remove onto his own shot and then the French skip drew for 2 and an extra end. This would be the third extra end in 5 games for both teams – Poland had won both of their previous ones while France had lost both of theirs.

Over on Sheet D Austria were determined that things would not be easy for Italy and when their skip drew a perfect draw behind a guard it needed a gentle tap back from the Italian skip to win the game, but unfortunately for him he was heavy and slipped through the house. Cue scenes of equal despair and delight as the Czechs were let back into the competition with at least a tie break against Italy. But things were still going on on Sheet B and with a Polish stone biting the front rings it just need a hit and roll from the Polish skip on a half guarded French shot to win and enter the tie-breakers. This was successfully achieved and what’s more their DSC distance gave Poland the bye to the second tie breaker leaving Italy and Czech Republic to fight it out in the first!

And now the story was – when would the tie breakers be played. For some reason there is only one time slot in the programme for tie breaker games – Saturday morning, but as two are needed would it be fair to ask either Czech Republic or Italy to possibly play 4 games in one day? Other options were play the first one late tonight (Friday) or delay the finals until Sunday. In the end there were no objections to starting early tomorrow morning and so the first tie breaker is at 8 am.

So to summarise: Tie Breaker 1 in Group B is Italy v Czech Republic, winner plays Poland, winner plays Estonia in semi-final. In Group A tie breaker 1 is Russia v Netherlands and winner plays Germany in semi-final. So how about the girls – well it was all rather tame and over in the first session of play today – Norway, Germany and Italy all won and finished in that order and so Germany will play Italy in the semi-final and the winner will play Norway in the final. The second session was all about bragging rights for those teams below. Final report on what will be a long day tomorrow though I shall be spending a lot of it anywhere else than the curling club as I try and see more than one square mile of Prague!