The long-standing friendship of Tom Brewster and Dave Murdoch was tested when they were forced together four years ago, but the two veteran skips were united in expressing their unhappiness yesterday after it was announced that both had missed out on selection for next year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Ahead of the trip to Sochi in 2014 the pair found themselves at the centre of a major controversy when Murdoch was catapulted into Brewster’s team that had reached the final of the previous two years’ World Championships, then replaced him as skip.
Reaching the final and returning with silver medals went some
way towards justifying the selectors’ call, but there will be no chance of
that for either of them this time around with the team led by Kyle Smith beating both of them to selection and both men registered considerable dissatisfaction with the outcome.
“Obviously we were shocked and disappointed,” said Murdoch, who continued to play alongside Greg Drummond, Scott Andrews and Michael Goodfellow after Sochi, while Brewster formed another team.
“We thought with our experience and winning our national championships we were in a good spot. We thought we would have secured the place if we had won a medal at this year’s World Championships, but there was a lot on the table that week. We had to qualify Team GB for the Olympics which we did.”
Having played in the last three Winter Olympics, finally claiming a medal in becoming the first British skip to lead a team to a final since Rhona Martin delivered her ‘stone of destiny’ in 2002, the 39-year-old raised concerns about sending a team that has little major championship experience.
“They still have to show if they can deliver at a major championship and that’s something we felt we were extremely good at doing,” Murdoch observed.
Brewster echoed that view noting that both he and Murdoch had demonstrated their capacity to cope with major championship pressure and he felt the competition among the three teams over the course of the previous three seasons had been such that there should have been a play-off, as happens annually to decide which of the Scottish teams qualifies for the European Championships.
“They had three teams to choose from and there’s not been a lot between them and Kyle’s team has a great season with a lot of good results, but I think it was more of a surprise that there was no play-off because I don’t think any of us could have expected to be selected. I know the selectors didn’t desire it to go to a play-off though,” he observed.
Brewster noted that Smith’s youthful team which includes his brother Cammy, as well as Kyle Waddell and Thomas Muirhead, whose older brother Glen has been selected as their alternate (travelling reserve) and is a member of Brewster’s team, has yet to win a Scottish title.
While Team Smith has accrued a full set of World Junior Championship medals, winning that title in 2014 having picked up bronze the previous year and going on to reach the final again in 2015 they have, to date, only been to one senior international championships at the Europeans in 2015.
By contrast Brewster’s men went to both the World and European Championships in 2016, while Murdoch’s Scottish title win saw his team go to the Worlds this year, but that may have worked against them.
“Dave and I both failed when we represented Scotland,” he acknowledged.
“I think if either of our teams had won medals that would have put us in a very strong position.”
Murdoch admitted last night that he needs time to reflect on what has happened and evaluate what his future holds, but for all that he is two years older, Brewster confirmed that he will continue to compete.
He suggested, however, that while the selection system has improved since the build-up to the 2014 Games with much more focus on teams rather than individuals, it can be further improved by making what is required clearer at an earlier stage.
Graeme Thompson, British Curling’s performance director, accepted that the decision of the selection panel on which he sat along with head coach Tony Zummack and performance analyst had come as a blow to the most decorated skips in the modern men’s game, but defended the outcome following yesterday’s official announcement at the Royal Highland Show.
“Selection’s a really difficult time for everybody concerned because you work for three years for something,” he said.
“I’ve sat down with pretty much all the players and had discussions, particularly with Tom and David.
I know they’re disappointed, but we had to make a decision and we feel we made clearly the right one in terms of the criteria we were using. We’re fortunate, there are three teams in the top 20 in the world which nobody else has outside of Canada.
“However, Team Smith were furthest up those rankings and that was important to us. Last season, in terms of world ranking points and points the year through, Team Smith had the best season by any of the teams over the last two years.”
By contrast, there had been no possibility of any sort of surprise in the women’s contest which could not have been any more clear-cut.
In spite of making significant personnel changes on and off the ice, skip Eve Muirhead and her team-mates Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Lauren Gray, who will be accompanied by Canada-based alternate Kelly Wood, have been the Scottish representatives at every major championship they could have attended since Sochi.
As the highest placed Scottish team in the world rankings they completed the full set of automatic qualification criteria when they added a bronze medal at this year’s World Championship to the bronze they picked up at the Europeans at Braehead earlier in the season.
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