Scotland got it right, this time around.
David Murdoch’s rink recorded a three-ender in the eighth end to lead them to a tight 7-6 win over Denmark’s Rasmus Stjerne in the bronze-medal game of the 2013 Ford World Men’s Curling Championship in Victoria on Sunday afternoon.
Murdoch and third Tom Brewster, second Scott Andrews and lead Michael Goodfellow rebounded after a controversial loss to Canada in the semifinal the night previous.
Coach Soren Gran made a bold move on Saturday, taking Brewster out as third and replacing him with Greg Drummond. Not a great surprise — considering the Scots went with a five-man rotation through the championship at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre — but a gutsy decision.
After Brewster curled just 60 per cent Friday night in a loss to Sweden, most probably would have agreed with the move. But considering Brewster had skipped Scotland to back-to-back silver medals the last two years, it was a gamble. One that did not pay off.
Brewster went back in on Sunday and the Scots delivered the bronze.
“I’m really delighted with the guys,” Murdoch said. “We got up this morning after we completely binned the game the night before, and that’s tough to do when you know you know you had the chance at the final. But we really wanted this medal. To go home without it would have been a wee bit heartbreaking, considering how well we’ve played this week.”
It’s the sixth-straight medal at worlds for the Scots.
“I’d never really thought about that, but it shows real consistency,” Murdoch said. “And the other thing I noticed was all the players on this team, every time they’ve been at a world championship, they’ve been in that Page (playoff) 1-2 game. That shows, when we come to worlds, we’re tough to beat. Sometimes you have that luck, sometimes you don’t.”
Meanwhile, Stjerne and his third, Johnny Frederiksen, were hoping to duplicate what their fathers Tommy Stjerne and Ivan Frederiksen did back in 1990: win a world bronze.
“We struggled to put down good ends where we had all eight good shots,” said the younger Stjerne, who won a world junior title in Vancouver in 2009. “We were off today. It was a long week, but when we go back home, we’ll be rather pleased with what we have done here.”
Stjerne made a big mistake with his last stone in the eighth end that left the door open for Murdoch, who tapped out an exposed rock for the three to grab a 7-4 lead.
Stjerne, 24, then made a pistol with a short run-back to kill three Scottish stones to count two in the ninth end. He failed to steal in the 10th to force an extra end and his team, which included Harry Troels at lead and second Mikkel Poulsen, finished fourth in the second-last game of the competition.
Canada’s Brad Jacobs takes on Sweden’s Niklas Edin in Sunday’s gold medal game at 4 p.m.
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