Scotland’s Team Morrison ended their LGT World Women’s Curling Championships in Sweden with a 7-6 defeat to defending champions Switzerland and a 10-7 loss to Turkey.
It was a final day of round-robin action that in many ways summed up the week for Aberdeen’s Rebecca Morrison, Gina Aitken, Sophie Sinclair, Sophie Jackson and Jen Dodds as they stayed in contention to the final ends of both matches without managing to add to their haul of wins.
Opening the day against Silvana Tirinzoni’s Swiss team that was on its way to heading into the play-offs with a perfect record of 12 wins as they aim to claim a fourth successive World Championships title, they showed their determination from the off.
Scots battle to the final end but finish their @worldcurling champs campaign with a 10-7 defeat to Turkiye.
📸WCF/Jeffrey Au
3⃣W9⃣L#curling #WWCC2023 pic.twitter.com/eJ3hdGv7rX— British Curling (@BritishCurling) March 24, 2023
A blanked opening end was followed by the Scots forcing their opponents to take a single at the second and even after they conceded a three at the fourth end to fall 4-1 behind, they stuck to their task, scoring twos at the seventh and ninth ends to level the match at 6-6 going into the final end when Alina Paetz had to make a delicate and difficult raise with her final stone to maintain Switzerland’s 100 per cent record.
“We had a great game against Switzerland this morning and almost came away with a win, but it was pretty disappointing to have another tight loss, but obviously great to take the world champions to the last stone,” said skip Morrison.
No Turkish delight for Scots
In their evening match they were always looking to make up lost ground after conceding a two at the opening end then being forced at the second, before Turkey scored a three at the fifth end to take a 6-2 advantage into the midway break.
The Scots responded with a three of their own at the sixth, but a Turkish steal at the eighth end gave them breathing space as they moved 8-5 up and while Team Morrison claimed a two at the ninth end to test them, opposing skip Dilsat Yildiz produced a well judged take out with the final stone to round off the win.
“It wasn’t our best game, so it’s a bit disappointing to finish on that note, a bit of a downer at the end of our championship, but that’s life,” said Morrison.
“It’s been a tough week, but we know that if we come back next year we’re going to have learned so much from this experience.”
After the full round-robin schedule was completed, Norway joined Switzerland in heading directly into the semi-finals as one of the top two, while Canada will meet Japan and Italy will face hosts Sweden in the first round of the play-offs.
