Scotland’s Team Morrison suffered two more cruel defeats to Norway and Italy on the fourth day of action at the LGT World Women’s Curling Championships, but still believe they can turn things around in their remaining matches in Sweden.
Following the 9-6 loss to Norway, a change injected additional experience into their ranks as Olympic gold medallist Jen Dodds came into the line-up, but that was still not sufficient to get the better of an Italian quartet that is also challenging strongly for a play-off place.
Aberdonian Rebecca Morrison, Gina Aitken, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson had a mountain to climb in the meeting with Norway, led by two-time Olympic medallist Kristin Skaslien when they conceded a two at the opening end, then a steal at the next, but they fought back to get within range at 6-4 down, before conceding a decisive three at the eighth.
With Dodds replacing Aitken, they again fell behind when Italy, scored a three at the second end and while they showed real spirit to level things by the sixth end, they were just edged out 7-6 when Olympic mixed doubles gold medallist Stefania Constantini’s perfectly played raise left Morrison with a near impossible double take-out which she came millimetres away from pulling off.
🏴Narrow loss for Scots who lose out 7-6 to on-form Italy on day four @worldcurling Champs in Sweden.
One game day tomorrow when they play USA.
1⃣W6⃣L
📸WCF/Jeffrey Au#curling #WWCC2023 pic.twitter.com/bbfMrENWFh— British Curling (@BritishCurling) March 21, 2023
“After a really well fought game last night against Canada the girls were absolutely up for putting in another good performance and trying to get a win on the board against Norway,” said their coach Nancy Smith.
“They just went down early on at the first couple of ends, but the girls always had belief that they would come back in that game because they’ve done that before and they fought hard, but were up against a skip that was playing in the 90s and it’s really tough to win against a skip that plays that well.
“Their team all played really solid against us, so we put that to bed and decided that we’d change our line-up to try and see if that would help get something going against Italy.
“Bringing Jen on we know that she’ll be able to slot in with her experience and we played one of our best games of the week.
“There were loads of chances where we could potentially generate a two or a three, but it was just an inch here, an inch there that was the difference.”
Team remaining upbeat
With the team now requiring help from elsewhere to have any chance of making the play-offs, if they win their five remaining matches, Smith believes they will fight to the end as they bid to finish as high up the table as possible.
“The girls all played pretty solid, but we’ve now got to get them up again because we’ve still got five more games and every game matters to this team,” she said.
“We’ve just got one game tomorrow against the USA, so we have to stay positive and understand that we’ve been developing every game which is all we can ask out here and how we learn.”
