International medals, Part 1
The gold medals won by Rob Retchless and his team of Joe Sugden, Scott Gibson, Jonathan Havercroft, Felix Price and coach David Ramsay in Division B of the 2023 European Championship in Perth were the first medals of that colour to have been won by an England men’s team since we first started sending teams to International competitions in 1976.
It matches the feats of our women’s team who won the gold medal in 2007 at the European B Division Championships, and our Junior Women who won the gold at the European Junior Challenge in 2015.
In addition to those 3 golds, England’s teams have won 3 silver medals and 12 bronze medals over the years. So what are the stories behind these 18 successes.
1 - 1976 European Championship, Berlin (Women) – Bronze
This, the second edition of the European Championships, was the first to which England sent teams. The men’s team skipped by Ron Thornton failed to win any of its 9 games but it was a different story for the women. Led by the redoubtable Connie Miller they faced opposition from just 7 other teams: by comparison 28 entered this year in the A, B and C Divisions combined.
Wins over Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Italy were paired with defeats by Scotland, Sweden and France and their 4-3 record was enough for them to finish 4th equal with Switzerland against whom they then played a tie-breaker which was narrowly won by 7-6 to earn them a semi-final against Sweden. These days of course their win over the Swiss in the round robin would have been enough to see them through without the extra game.
In the semi-final the Swedes were just too good and they won by 13-2. At the same time the Scots were being beaten 8-1 by France and, with no bronze medal play-off planned, the two home nations each received bronze medals.
Connie Miller, Susan Hinds, Christine Black and Freda Fisher were the team members and although they returned to the European Championships in 1978 they were unable to repeat their performance from 2 years previously.
Susan Hinds, Connie Miller, Freda Fisher and Christine Black
So that was a great start to England’s International participation but it would be another 24 years before another set of medals was won!
Until 1999 a number of different formats were tried to cope with the increasing number of European entries and although there were notionally A and B groupings it was not until 2000 that a separate Division B with its own set of medals was held. Until then the likelihood of an England team finishing in the medal positions in a field including Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Germany et al was fairly slim though the men did finish 4th in 1990 and 5th in 1984.
2 - 2000 European Championship, B Division, Oberstdorf (Women) – Bronze
There were still only 13 teams in total with 8 in the A Division and 5 in the B division. The women were led by Joan Reed playing in her 7th European Championship but the rest of her team were new to this level though Fiona Turner (at lead) had been alternate for Joan in 1998. Lorna Rettig and Fiona Hawker were two newcomers with good curling backgrounds from playing in Scotland and Joan Dixon was the alternate.
A defeat in the first game from Italy by just 6-7 was followed up by a win over Finland by 9-7 and a defeat from the Czech Republic by 5-8. With only 5 teams and semi-finals planned just one team was going to be eliminated and it looked as though that would be England when they let slip a 3-0 lead to lose to the Netherlands by 3-12. However the Dutch then lost to Finland in their last game and this set up a tie-breaker between the Netherlands and England, both teams on 1 win and 3 losses.
Again, as in 1976, under modern rules England would have been eliminated on a head-to-head record but they grabbed this second chance and in a pulsating game outlasted the Dutch to win by 12-10 having been 5-10 down with 3 ends to go.
So the Dutch were eliminated and it was England who played Finland in the semi-final but a poor performance saw them well beaten by 3-14 before they bounced back to beat Italy 9-1 for the bronze medal.
Joan Reed, Lorna Rettig, Fiona Hawker, Fiona Turner, Joan Dixon
3 - 2000 European Championship, B Division, Oberstdorf (Men) – Bronze
The men’s campaign got off to an unfortunate start when Harvey Curle had to return home before the first game after a family bereavement but fortunately they had brought an alternative and so it was James Dixon, along with his brother Andrew Dixon, Richard Murray and Chris Smith who lined up for their first ever game at the European level, this one against Bulgaria, one of 7 countries they would face.
There were 9 singles scored in this game shared between the teams with Bulgaria scoring 5 of them but fortunately England scored a 4 in amongst them to take the victory by 8-5. This was followed up with wins over Belarus (9-7), Wales (8-7), Russia (6-5) and the Czech Republic (8-4) punctuated by losses to Austria (5-11) and Italy (3-9) to finish with a 5-2 record, the same as Italy and the Czech Republic with Italy on top having beaten the other 2.
In the semi-final the Czechs got their revenge for their earlier defeat by England, winning 10-4 and then going on to beat Italy in the Final. The 4th qualifier was Russia (after a tie-break) and after they had lost to Italy in the semi-final they were then well beaten by England who won 8-1 to cap a successful Championships for the England teams.
James Dixon, Richard Murray, Andrew Dixon, Chris Smith (hidden)
4 - 2001 European Championship, B Division, Vierumaki (Men) – Silver
After the successes in Oberstdorf, hopes were high for the 2001 Championship in the middle of Finland at the sporting institute of Vierumaki. The women, skipped by Sarah Johnston this time, again reached the semi-final before losing to the Czech Republic and then losing in the Bronze medal to Italy who avenged their 2000 drubbing by winning 10-1.
This year the England men were the team which had represented us in the World Junior Championship in 1999, skipped by Andrew Reed (the first of many appearances) with Daniel Jaeggi, Tom Jaeggi and Chris Smith while John Brown was added as alternate.
At the end of an 8 team round-robin England finished tied at the top with Wales on 6-1 records, with Wales first by dint of winning the head-to-head game by 8-6. Apart from that wins were recorded over Russia (9-4), Austria (9-3), Luxembourg (8-4), Netherlands (9-3), Bulgaria (6-3) and Belarus (13-1). Russia and Austria were third and fourth on 4 wins and 3 losses.
England then won a close battle against Russia by 6-5 in the semi-final while Austria, surprisingly, beat Wales to set up another in a long history of crucial games between us and Austria and this one was to be a humdinger. England held the advantage initially, pushing out to a 5-2 lead at half time, maintaining this at 6-3 after 7. Austria blanked 8 and then were forced to take a 1 in the 9th giving England the hammer going down the tenth.
It is a shot that still haunts Andrew Reed to this day – the choice for his last stone was to draw or hit to score the one point to win the game and the gold medals. Many thought the draw was the one to play but Andrew chose the hit and agonizingly his shooter rolled out to leave Austria lying 2 and the teams heading for an extra end where Austria stole a 3 from a devastated young team, leaving them with the silver medals.
However there was still another game to play. By winning the final Austria had qualified for the A Division the following year while England would face the Czech Republic (the 9th placed team in Division A) in a one-off game to decide which of them would play in Division A in 2002. To their credit the young team came back from their loss (which had also cost them a chance of a qualifying game to get to the World Championship) to defeat the Czech Republic by 8-6 and send England up into the heady heights of the top division.
As a first foray into a senior International Championships for Andrew and his team it had been a success but what a story it would have been if ………
Daniel Jaeggi, Joan Reed (coach), Chris Smith, Tom Jaeggi, Andrew Reed
5 - 2002 European Championship, B Division, Grindelwald (Women) – Silver
With the men up among the big boys in Division A (where they scored notable victories over Scotland, Switzerland and, pleasingly, Austria to finish 8th) the better chance of a medal lay with the women. Sarah Johnston was skipping the team again but in a total change from her previous team it now included the returning Lorna Rettig and Fiona Hawker with newcomers Kirsty Balfour and Nicola Woodward.
New entrants to the Championship, Latvia (10-2), Spain (12-5) and Andorra (21-3) were beaten fairly comfortably while there were also wins over old rivals Bulgaria (11-5) and Netherlands (11-6). Wales had also returned to the Championship after 8 years with, like the England team, a distinctly Scottish flavour. In a topsy-turvy game Wales won 11-10 while we also lost to Italy by 5-9.
This left us 3rd in the table and with Wales finishing 2nd it meant a semi-final between the 2 countries beckoned. This time England shot into an early 6-1 lead and held on to win 9-5 to reach the final against Italy. The game was tied 5-5 after 6 but Italy were stronger in the last 4 ends and won by 8-6 leaving England with the silver medals.
As with the men in 2001, this was not the end of the story as there followed a game to decide which of Finland (9th in Division A) and England would play in the top division in 2003. As in the final against Italy the scores were tied at 5-5 (after7) and then Finland, having blanked the 8th were forced to a 1 in the 9th which England capitalized on by scoring 4 in the 10th to take us up to Division A for 2003 where we would be playing alongside the men who had retained their position.
Top - Kirsty Balfour, Robin Gemmell (Coach), Sarah McVey, Nicola Woodward; Bottom - Lorna Rettig, Fiona Hawker
6 – 2003 World Senior Championship, Winnipeg (Women) - Bronze
After a trial competition at the World Championships at Braehead in 2000, the official World Senior Championships began in 2002 in Bismarck, South Dakota when only 4 women’s teams entered, of which England was not one. In 2003 in Winnipeg, helped by a contribution to the cost of flights from the WCF, this number had expanded to 10. The England team was skipped by Joan Reed with Glynnice Lauder, Venetia Scott, and Moira Davison from the Glendale Club.
An excellent round robin saw the team finish in 3rd place with a 6-3 record behind Canada and Scotland with victories recorded over Japan (5-2), Italy (8-4), Switzerland (9-6), Netherlands (8-2), Denmark (9-2) and New Zealand (12-1) to set against defeats from Canada (3-6), Scotland (5-7) and USA (2-7). The USA were squeezed out of the play-offs by dint of losing to Japan and England faced Scotland in the semi-final.
It could hardly have been closer – first Scotland scored 2 singles to which the English reply was the same and then, after a blank, Scotland scored another one but England again scored 1 in the 7th so it was all-square going down the 8th end which Scotland won with the hammer to record a final score of 4-3. This was no disgrace as the Scotland team was skipped by Carolyn Morris who went on to win the World Seniors twice – once for Scotland and then for Canada.
So it was a bronze medal game against Japan to follow and this time, after losing a one at the first and blanking the second, England racked up 8 points without reply for an 8-1 scoreline and bronze medals. It was nearly the same story the following year when virtually the same team (but with Irene Laidler standing in at the last minute for Venetia Scott) narrowly lost out on the bronze to USA by a score of 6-7.
Moira Davison, Venetia Scott, Glynnice Lauder, Joan Reed
7 – 2004 - European Championship, B Division, Sofia (Men) – Bronze
After 2 years in Division A of the European Championship England were back in Division B for the trip into unknown territory in Bulgaria.
There had been a massive increase in the number of countries entering the Championship since we had last been in Division B in 2001 so that instead of 8 teams in the division there were now 17 divided into 2 groups (a 9 and an 8). This was before the C Division was introduced. This meant that the team of Andrew Reed, Harvey Curle, Chris Smith, Richard Murray and John Brown would face 5 nations they had never played before.
Only 2 teams would qualify out of each group and England put together a solid string of results to finish top of the group, level on wins with the Czech Republic who they had beaten 10-3 on the way. Some of the new nations were dealt with fairly comfortably – Slovakia (11-5), Grece (15-6) and Kazakhstan (15-4), but it was more of a struggle against Spain (8-4) and especially Latvia (8-7). The only defeat was from the Netherlands (5-6) who then failed to qualify as they lost to Latvia.
The semi-final against Finland was a bit of a disaster! Finland had hammer and blanked the first end before taking a 5 at the second. We scored a 1 at the third and then lost another 5 at the fourth – hands were shaken early with the final score at 12-2 for Finland.
So it was time for a regroup before the bronze medal game – against the Czech Republic who we had already beaten quite easily in the round robin. This game looked to be going the same way as England were ahead 5-0 after just 4 ends but then it was a case of hanging on as the Czechs fought back such that the final score was just 5-4 and another set of bronze medals was winging its way back to England.
Sorry I have no picture of this team.
8 – 2005 - European Championship, B Division, Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Women) – Bronze
With medals for one of the teams every year between 2000 and 2004, except for 2003 when both had been in the A Division, could the trend be continued when the teams arrived in a snowy Garmisch-Partenkirchen in southern Germany?
The answer was indeed ‘Yes’ and this time it was the turn of the women – Joan Reed, Lorna Rettig, Claire Grimwood, Kirsty Balfour and Caroline Reed to do the business.
As was the case with the men’s B Division, the number of entries in the women’s B Division had also increased though not to quite the same extent, but there were 14 teams divided into 2 groups of 7. The team finished the round robin with just the one defeat, to Germany, who finished top of the group, by 5-7. Their other games resulted in victories over France (8-4), Ireland (11-4), Estonia (13-3), Kazakhstan (10-2) and Bulgaria (9-7).
The semi-final brough them up against the Czech Republic (who feature quite heavily in these reports), who had finished top of the other group. Two early 4s for the Czechs set the basis for a 12-3 victory and so it was another bronze medal play-off for England, this time against Latvia. After 8 ends it was 7-3 for the Latvians but a 3 in the ninth and a steal of 1 in the tenth for England took the game into an extra end where another steal of 3 sealed a memorable comeback and another set of bronze medals.
For Joan this was her third bronze, while Lorna now had 1 silver and 2 bronzes – could either of them improve on their haul in the future?
Joan Reed, Lorna Rettig, Claire Grimwood, Kirsty Balfour, Caroline Reed
9 – 2006 - European Championship, B Division, Basel (Women) – Bronze
Having continued the run of medals how would the teams fare when the European Championships went back to Germany, to Fussen in 2007? Well, once again it was the women who took centre stage with another bronze medal for Joan Reed, Lorna Rettig, Claire Grimwood and Kirsty Balfour.
There were only 12 teams in the B Division this year, again divided into 2 equal groups, so with only 5 games to qualify it was vital that the team made a good start and this they did with a 12-7 win over Estonia, having led 10-2 after 6 ends. Another good start against Lithuania was turned into a 10-4 victory before a bad beginning against France condemned them to a 4-8 defeat. With only 2 games left they had to win both to ensure qualification and they won the first against Spain by 10-5 and followed that up with a resounding 12-4 result against Austria.
France had lost to Austria and so all three teams tied on 4 wins and the results of the head-to-head games could not produce a ranking but for some reason, lost in the mists of time (was it a form of LSD?), England were placed first while the other 2 had to play a tie break to decide who was going to be ranked second – Austria won this game by 7-6 after an extra end!
For the first time in the Europeans the Page Play-off system was used which meant that England had to play the top team in the other group in the 1-2 game and this was Finland. A close game in which both teams led by no more than 1 shot was settled when Finland stole 1 in the eighth end to go 5-3 up and although England got one back in the ninth, last stone advantage helped Finland take 2 in the tenth for a 7-4 win.
In the 3-4 game, Austria beat Hungary by 9-8 and so would meet England in the semi-final. Under the Page system this meant that the loser of that game would get the Bronze medal while the winner went on to the final. Unfortunately we could not reproduce the form that we had shown against Austria in the round robin and we fell to a 6-8 defeat in a topsy-turvy game which was only settled at the last stone in the tenth. So yet another set of bronze medals and Joan and Lorna with 4 (including 1 silver) and Kirsty with 3 (including 1 silver) were piling them up back at home. Austria went on to victory in the final, their 4th sudden death win in a row.
Lorna Rettig, Kirsty Balfour, Joan Reed, Claire Grimwood
So that is us halfway through telling the tale of England’s 18 medal successes: the tale of the next 9 will follow in part 2.
It matches the feats of our women’s team who won the gold medal in 2007 at the European B Division Championships, and our Junior Women who won the gold at the European Junior Challenge in 2015.
In addition to those 3 golds, England’s teams have won 3 silver medals and 12 bronze medals over the years. So what are the stories behind these 18 successes.
1 - 1976 European Championship, Berlin (Women) – Bronze
This, the second edition of the European Championships, was the first to which England sent teams. The men’s team skipped by Ron Thornton failed to win any of its 9 games but it was a different story for the women. Led by the redoubtable Connie Miller they faced opposition from just 7 other teams: by comparison 28 entered this year in the A, B and C Divisions combined.
Wins over Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Italy were paired with defeats by Scotland, Sweden and France and their 4-3 record was enough for them to finish 4th equal with Switzerland against whom they then played a tie-breaker which was narrowly won by 7-6 to earn them a semi-final against Sweden. These days of course their win over the Swiss in the round robin would have been enough to see them through without the extra game.
In the semi-final the Swedes were just too good and they won by 13-2. At the same time the Scots were being beaten 8-1 by France and, with no bronze medal play-off planned, the two home nations each received bronze medals.
Connie Miller, Susan Hinds, Christine Black and Freda Fisher were the team members and although they returned to the European Championships in 1978 they were unable to repeat their performance from 2 years previously.
So that was a great start to England’s International participation but it would be another 24 years before another set of medals was won!
Until 1999 a number of different formats were tried to cope with the increasing number of European entries and although there were notionally A and B groupings it was not until 2000 that a separate Division B with its own set of medals was held. Until then the likelihood of an England team finishing in the medal positions in a field including Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Germany et al was fairly slim though the men did finish 4th in 1990 and 5th in 1984.
2 - 2000 European Championship, B Division, Oberstdorf (Women) – Bronze
There were still only 13 teams in total with 8 in the A Division and 5 in the B division. The women were led by Joan Reed playing in her 7th European Championship but the rest of her team were new to this level though Fiona Turner (at lead) had been alternate for Joan in 1998. Lorna Rettig and Fiona Hawker were two newcomers with good curling backgrounds from playing in Scotland and Joan Dixon was the alternate.
A defeat in the first game from Italy by just 6-7 was followed up by a win over Finland by 9-7 and a defeat from the Czech Republic by 5-8. With only 5 teams and semi-finals planned just one team was going to be eliminated and it looked as though that would be England when they let slip a 3-0 lead to lose to the Netherlands by 3-12. However the Dutch then lost to Finland in their last game and this set up a tie-breaker between the Netherlands and England, both teams on 1 win and 3 losses.
Again, as in 1976, under modern rules England would have been eliminated on a head-to-head record but they grabbed this second chance and in a pulsating game outlasted the Dutch to win by 12-10 having been 5-10 down with 3 ends to go.
So the Dutch were eliminated and it was England who played Finland in the semi-final but a poor performance saw them well beaten by 3-14 before they bounced back to beat Italy 9-1 for the bronze medal.
3 - 2000 European Championship, B Division, Oberstdorf (Men) – Bronze
The men’s campaign got off to an unfortunate start when Harvey Curle had to return home before the first game after a family bereavement but fortunately they had brought an alternative and so it was James Dixon, along with his brother Andrew Dixon, Richard Murray and Chris Smith who lined up for their first ever game at the European level, this one against Bulgaria, one of 7 countries they would face.
There were 9 singles scored in this game shared between the teams with Bulgaria scoring 5 of them but fortunately England scored a 4 in amongst them to take the victory by 8-5. This was followed up with wins over Belarus (9-7), Wales (8-7), Russia (6-5) and the Czech Republic (8-4) punctuated by losses to Austria (5-11) and Italy (3-9) to finish with a 5-2 record, the same as Italy and the Czech Republic with Italy on top having beaten the other 2.
In the semi-final the Czechs got their revenge for their earlier defeat by England, winning 10-4 and then going on to beat Italy in the Final. The 4th qualifier was Russia (after a tie-break) and after they had lost to Italy in the semi-final they were then well beaten by England who won 8-1 to cap a successful Championships for the England teams.
4 - 2001 European Championship, B Division, Vierumaki (Men) – Silver
After the successes in Oberstdorf, hopes were high for the 2001 Championship in the middle of Finland at the sporting institute of Vierumaki. The women, skipped by Sarah Johnston this time, again reached the semi-final before losing to the Czech Republic and then losing in the Bronze medal to Italy who avenged their 2000 drubbing by winning 10-1.
This year the England men were the team which had represented us in the World Junior Championship in 1999, skipped by Andrew Reed (the first of many appearances) with Daniel Jaeggi, Tom Jaeggi and Chris Smith while John Brown was added as alternate.
At the end of an 8 team round-robin England finished tied at the top with Wales on 6-1 records, with Wales first by dint of winning the head-to-head game by 8-6. Apart from that wins were recorded over Russia (9-4), Austria (9-3), Luxembourg (8-4), Netherlands (9-3), Bulgaria (6-3) and Belarus (13-1). Russia and Austria were third and fourth on 4 wins and 3 losses.
England then won a close battle against Russia by 6-5 in the semi-final while Austria, surprisingly, beat Wales to set up another in a long history of crucial games between us and Austria and this one was to be a humdinger. England held the advantage initially, pushing out to a 5-2 lead at half time, maintaining this at 6-3 after 7. Austria blanked 8 and then were forced to take a 1 in the 9th giving England the hammer going down the tenth.
It is a shot that still haunts Andrew Reed to this day – the choice for his last stone was to draw or hit to score the one point to win the game and the gold medals. Many thought the draw was the one to play but Andrew chose the hit and agonizingly his shooter rolled out to leave Austria lying 2 and the teams heading for an extra end where Austria stole a 3 from a devastated young team, leaving them with the silver medals.
However there was still another game to play. By winning the final Austria had qualified for the A Division the following year while England would face the Czech Republic (the 9th placed team in Division A) in a one-off game to decide which of them would play in Division A in 2002. To their credit the young team came back from their loss (which had also cost them a chance of a qualifying game to get to the World Championship) to defeat the Czech Republic by 8-6 and send England up into the heady heights of the top division.
As a first foray into a senior International Championships for Andrew and his team it had been a success but what a story it would have been if ………
5 - 2002 European Championship, B Division, Grindelwald (Women) – Silver
With the men up among the big boys in Division A (where they scored notable victories over Scotland, Switzerland and, pleasingly, Austria to finish 8th) the better chance of a medal lay with the women. Sarah Johnston was skipping the team again but in a total change from her previous team it now included the returning Lorna Rettig and Fiona Hawker with newcomers Kirsty Balfour and Nicola Woodward.
New entrants to the Championship, Latvia (10-2), Spain (12-5) and Andorra (21-3) were beaten fairly comfortably while there were also wins over old rivals Bulgaria (11-5) and Netherlands (11-6). Wales had also returned to the Championship after 8 years with, like the England team, a distinctly Scottish flavour. In a topsy-turvy game Wales won 11-10 while we also lost to Italy by 5-9.
This left us 3rd in the table and with Wales finishing 2nd it meant a semi-final between the 2 countries beckoned. This time England shot into an early 6-1 lead and held on to win 9-5 to reach the final against Italy. The game was tied 5-5 after 6 but Italy were stronger in the last 4 ends and won by 8-6 leaving England with the silver medals.
As with the men in 2001, this was not the end of the story as there followed a game to decide which of Finland (9th in Division A) and England would play in the top division in 2003. As in the final against Italy the scores were tied at 5-5 (after7) and then Finland, having blanked the 8th were forced to a 1 in the 9th which England capitalized on by scoring 4 in the 10th to take us up to Division A for 2003 where we would be playing alongside the men who had retained their position.
6 – 2003 World Senior Championship, Winnipeg (Women) - Bronze
After a trial competition at the World Championships at Braehead in 2000, the official World Senior Championships began in 2002 in Bismarck, South Dakota when only 4 women’s teams entered, of which England was not one. In 2003 in Winnipeg, helped by a contribution to the cost of flights from the WCF, this number had expanded to 10. The England team was skipped by Joan Reed with Glynnice Lauder, Venetia Scott, and Moira Davison from the Glendale Club.
An excellent round robin saw the team finish in 3rd place with a 6-3 record behind Canada and Scotland with victories recorded over Japan (5-2), Italy (8-4), Switzerland (9-6), Netherlands (8-2), Denmark (9-2) and New Zealand (12-1) to set against defeats from Canada (3-6), Scotland (5-7) and USA (2-7). The USA were squeezed out of the play-offs by dint of losing to Japan and England faced Scotland in the semi-final.
It could hardly have been closer – first Scotland scored 2 singles to which the English reply was the same and then, after a blank, Scotland scored another one but England again scored 1 in the 7th so it was all-square going down the 8th end which Scotland won with the hammer to record a final score of 4-3. This was no disgrace as the Scotland team was skipped by Carolyn Morris who went on to win the World Seniors twice – once for Scotland and then for Canada.
So it was a bronze medal game against Japan to follow and this time, after losing a one at the first and blanking the second, England racked up 8 points without reply for an 8-1 scoreline and bronze medals. It was nearly the same story the following year when virtually the same team (but with Irene Laidler standing in at the last minute for Venetia Scott) narrowly lost out on the bronze to USA by a score of 6-7.
7 – 2004 - European Championship, B Division, Sofia (Men) – Bronze
After 2 years in Division A of the European Championship England were back in Division B for the trip into unknown territory in Bulgaria.
There had been a massive increase in the number of countries entering the Championship since we had last been in Division B in 2001 so that instead of 8 teams in the division there were now 17 divided into 2 groups (a 9 and an 8). This was before the C Division was introduced. This meant that the team of Andrew Reed, Harvey Curle, Chris Smith, Richard Murray and John Brown would face 5 nations they had never played before.
Only 2 teams would qualify out of each group and England put together a solid string of results to finish top of the group, level on wins with the Czech Republic who they had beaten 10-3 on the way. Some of the new nations were dealt with fairly comfortably – Slovakia (11-5), Grece (15-6) and Kazakhstan (15-4), but it was more of a struggle against Spain (8-4) and especially Latvia (8-7). The only defeat was from the Netherlands (5-6) who then failed to qualify as they lost to Latvia.
The semi-final against Finland was a bit of a disaster! Finland had hammer and blanked the first end before taking a 5 at the second. We scored a 1 at the third and then lost another 5 at the fourth – hands were shaken early with the final score at 12-2 for Finland.
So it was time for a regroup before the bronze medal game – against the Czech Republic who we had already beaten quite easily in the round robin. This game looked to be going the same way as England were ahead 5-0 after just 4 ends but then it was a case of hanging on as the Czechs fought back such that the final score was just 5-4 and another set of bronze medals was winging its way back to England.
Sorry I have no picture of this team.
8 – 2005 - European Championship, B Division, Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Women) – Bronze
With medals for one of the teams every year between 2000 and 2004, except for 2003 when both had been in the A Division, could the trend be continued when the teams arrived in a snowy Garmisch-Partenkirchen in southern Germany?
The answer was indeed ‘Yes’ and this time it was the turn of the women – Joan Reed, Lorna Rettig, Claire Grimwood, Kirsty Balfour and Caroline Reed to do the business.
As was the case with the men’s B Division, the number of entries in the women’s B Division had also increased though not to quite the same extent, but there were 14 teams divided into 2 groups of 7. The team finished the round robin with just the one defeat, to Germany, who finished top of the group, by 5-7. Their other games resulted in victories over France (8-4), Ireland (11-4), Estonia (13-3), Kazakhstan (10-2) and Bulgaria (9-7).
The semi-final brough them up against the Czech Republic (who feature quite heavily in these reports), who had finished top of the other group. Two early 4s for the Czechs set the basis for a 12-3 victory and so it was another bronze medal play-off for England, this time against Latvia. After 8 ends it was 7-3 for the Latvians but a 3 in the ninth and a steal of 1 in the tenth for England took the game into an extra end where another steal of 3 sealed a memorable comeback and another set of bronze medals.
For Joan this was her third bronze, while Lorna now had 1 silver and 2 bronzes – could either of them improve on their haul in the future?
9 – 2006 - European Championship, B Division, Basel (Women) – Bronze
Having continued the run of medals how would the teams fare when the European Championships went back to Germany, to Fussen in 2007? Well, once again it was the women who took centre stage with another bronze medal for Joan Reed, Lorna Rettig, Claire Grimwood and Kirsty Balfour.
There were only 12 teams in the B Division this year, again divided into 2 equal groups, so with only 5 games to qualify it was vital that the team made a good start and this they did with a 12-7 win over Estonia, having led 10-2 after 6 ends. Another good start against Lithuania was turned into a 10-4 victory before a bad beginning against France condemned them to a 4-8 defeat. With only 2 games left they had to win both to ensure qualification and they won the first against Spain by 10-5 and followed that up with a resounding 12-4 result against Austria.
France had lost to Austria and so all three teams tied on 4 wins and the results of the head-to-head games could not produce a ranking but for some reason, lost in the mists of time (was it a form of LSD?), England were placed first while the other 2 had to play a tie break to decide who was going to be ranked second – Austria won this game by 7-6 after an extra end!
For the first time in the Europeans the Page Play-off system was used which meant that England had to play the top team in the other group in the 1-2 game and this was Finland. A close game in which both teams led by no more than 1 shot was settled when Finland stole 1 in the eighth end to go 5-3 up and although England got one back in the ninth, last stone advantage helped Finland take 2 in the tenth for a 7-4 win.
In the 3-4 game, Austria beat Hungary by 9-8 and so would meet England in the semi-final. Under the Page system this meant that the loser of that game would get the Bronze medal while the winner went on to the final. Unfortunately we could not reproduce the form that we had shown against Austria in the round robin and we fell to a 6-8 defeat in a topsy-turvy game which was only settled at the last stone in the tenth. So yet another set of bronze medals and Joan and Lorna with 4 (including 1 silver) and Kirsty with 3 (including 1 silver) were piling them up back at home. Austria went on to victory in the final, their 4th sudden death win in a row.
So that is us halfway through telling the tale of England’s 18 medal successes: the tale of the next 9 will follow in part 2.
Comments
Post a Comment