After the dramatic win for the England girls this morning, the boys came up against newcomers Slovenia and made a good start to lead 2-0 after two ends. A serious of errors however let the Slovenians take command and build a 5-2 lead which England could only peg back to 5-3 before the handshake. So 2 losses so far mean that all games now become must-wins for the boys.
The girls took command early against their Polish opponents in their second game of the day and another high quality performance by them all saw them cruise to a 10-3 win and keep up their challenge. Denmark bounced back from their defeat by England by thrashing Latvia 17-1 after just 6 ends while Hungary took a last stone victory over Turkey. This leaves Hungary on 3 wins and Denmark and England on 2 wins and 1 loss - all brewing up nicely to a possible three way tie at the top of the section if Denmark beat Hungary and other games go to form. At the moment Denmark have the best Draw Shot Challenge score.
While it is quite often that teams have to give up and shake hands halfway through the 8th end when they can no longer mathematically win, it is rare that this happens in the 7th end. At 1-17 down after the minimum required of 6 ends, it was expected that the Latvians would shake hands but from body language it would appear that the Latvian coach over-ruled the skip's decision (strictly not allowed as no communication is allowed between the team and bench but this was probably the first time the young skip had been in this situation). Of course this meant that the first time that a Latvian stone was out of play at the 7th end, then hands had to be shaken - it would appear that the Latvian coach may not have realised this as there was no other reason to expect his team to continue after the end of the 6th end.
Currently the England boys are on against Estonia and a report on this and other information in my next blog from a mild and snow-free Prague.
No comments:
Post a Comment