The second semifinal of the Moray Province Open Knockout was an East versus West clash which resulted in a decisive win for Steve Rankin’s Buckie rink and set the coast club up for a final against Ardclach’s Ally Fraser. Gus Forbes’ Nairn team travelled East in vain as handshakes after 5 ends saw Rankin’s lads victorious 8-2 . The Nairn boys took single shots at the opening 2 ends but counts of 3 and then a steal of 4 and another single steal sent them homewards to think again.
In the East Province League the lead at the top of Division 2 tightened as Bill Jaffrey took both points in the game against Eddie Milne. A huge count of 6 for Fochabers at the second end saw the scoreboard showing a 9-0 lead and, despite a strong comeback from the Darnaway team, they could never quite peg back such a big deficit and ran out 13-8 losers. With only 1 game to play, Jaffrey is just a single point behind leaders Dave MacPherson with both teams just about guaranteed promotion. Abby Duncan may still have something to say about that as his crushing 12-3 win over Andrew Allardyce kept his team in with an outside chance of going up a Division. 12-1 down after 6 ends, the Allardyce combo took little consolation from a 2 shot pick up at the last and are now, along with Eddie Milne, unable to avoid relegation.
The Division 3 lead changed hands again this week after Forres’s Charlie Watt jnr returned to winning ways with a big 18-0 victory over Lynn Roberts’ Moray Wheels . Simply nothing went the Wheels way and now Charlie leads the Province’s most competitive Division by a single point from Elgin’s Bob Stewart.
Commiserations are in order for the Great Britain Paralympic curlers, as not even the good form of Moray’s Gregor Ewan could steer the team into the semifinals.