WCT - Glasgow 2019

photo: the team (without Eliska) at the gala dinner at the Glynhill Hotel.

I think this was one of the worst organized tournaments we've played so far. It was unclear until almost the last minute if it was even going to be held. So we waited to book our hotel and especially to buy our tickets until it was confirmed. We had a bad experience with a tournament in Lockerbee (about five years ago) where the moment we had everything bought, they cancelled the tournament with the proviso that we could fly in to practice if we wanted. We refused and demanded compensation. We have never heard back since and despite my intervention with the Royal Caledonian Curling Club management, nothing has been achieved. Hence this time waiting until the moment of final confirmation. On Thursday we flew into Edinburgh and took the train to Glasgow. The consequence of a late purchase of tickets. We already knew we had one of two difficult groups with a total of sixteen participants. A combination of Swedish and Scottish curling awaited us in the main group. Apart from the teams playing the Continental Cup and the World Championship Qualifying Tournament at the same time, almost all the known quality teams were there. The first match was against the Swedes (Wrana), the second against another Swedish team (Sundberg) and the third against the Scottish team (Jackson), which is nominated as the national team for the upcoming World Cup round. We lost the first and third games because our opponent was simply better, made fewer mistakes, and once they got into a comfort zone defensively, there was no way back for us. The duel with Sundberg was open until the end when we went into the last end two down with the advantage. However, a well played end with the possibility of an extra end needed a bit of luck to shift to our side, and it didn't. After the main group, there was confusion with traffic and postponements of match times, even the cancellation of the final match in the Consolation Cup. In the aforementioned Consolation Cup, we handled one of the Scottish teams quite easily, but then the very confident playing Chinese (Jiang) stood in our way. We only played well in the second half, and that was not enough. If I add up our WCT tournament appearances this season, we have one absolute laurel (Wetzikon), two quarterfinals (Basel, Stockholm) and two failures to qualify for the playoffs.