Fox Sighted at Moray Leisure!

There were 3 games played this week in the Moray Province East curling League and on the keenest ice of the season so far, they proved to be high class contests.
In Division 2 it was good to see the return of the Gordon Castle gunslinger Abby Duncan to take charge of a team which up to now had been somewhat faltering. Duncan generally held the upper hand over his Elgin opponent Andrew Allardyce and scored shots at 4 of the mid 5 ends to lead 6-2 going into the last end. Allardyce could only score a single and the game finished with a 6-3 win for the Fochabers’ rink.
Bill Jaffrey’s Fochabers rink skipped by Wilson Burnett were also in sparkling form, albeit benefiting from the rub of the stones against Darnaway’s Eddie Milne. A particularly strong front end set up great positions for Burnett to nail a deuce in the third and sixth ends and a couple of single steals from well defended heads at ends 4 and 7. Poor Alan Douglas skipping the Darnaway outfit frequently found himself with near impossible last stones.
Hands were shaken on a 7-4 Fochabers victory.
The rearranged Division 3 game between Linda Hardie’s Forres rink and Georgia Clarke’s Juniors was an absolute cracker. Skip Carol Bennett plotted the Forres rink to a 4-0 lead before Georgia picked up a solid 3 shots and then a single steal to tie the score at 4 apiece after 5 ends. A 2 for Bennet and a single shot reply by Clarke at ends 6 and 7 respectively, gave the Forres team the closest of wins.
The talk of the rink this week was the outstanding form of both men’s and women’s Scottish teams at the European Championships in Lillehammer. Bruce Mouat and Eve Muirhead sitting at the top of their round robin standings.
Bill Jaffrey