We have been receiving a number of enquiries about where in Ireland people can try curling. Sadly there are currently no ice rinks that support curling in Ireland and all Irish Curling on ice activities take place in Scotland. There is an exciting plan to deliver an ice rink in South Dublin supported by the OFI, Winter Sports Federations and Irish Curling. The potential development is near the planning stage and timelines suggest 2028 opening.
This clearly won’t satisfy the current interest generated by excellent Olympic coverage but please do contact us. We have in the past managed to get a squad of people over to Stranraer for a come and try session and that may be a possibility at some stage. in the meantime, look out for local Floor Curling opportunities as some of these exist in different areas of the country.
Team Ireland have reached the halfway point in their 4 Nations campaign in the tussle for trophies to be decided tomorrow, Sunday.
Friday night saw the team take on Wales men and women and Wales ran out winners in both games, 10-7 in the men’s match and 8-5 in the women’s giving them a 6 point lead.
On Saturday, our Celtic warriors took on England men and women in the early draw running out 7-1 winners in the men’s and 8-7 in the women’s games giving them a 14-7 lead overall
The afternoon session saw Ireland play Scotland’s men and women and with the men winning 12-3 and the women going down by a single point, 7-8, Ireland take an overall lead 19-11 into tomorrow’s mixed matches.
Meanwhile, it’s all hands to the pumps for babysitting duties as young Oran Young is passed around various folk – including Eoin who was doing a grand job!!
Team Ireland is heading to the annual 4 Nations competition against their Welsh, English and Scottish counterparts to compete for the Meikle Trophy (Wales), the Turnbull Trophy (England) and the Marshall Millennium Trophy (Scotland).
Players from as far as Calgary, Ontario, Dublin, East Kilbride, Edinburgh and Kelso (not an exhaustive list) meet up to do battle for the prestigious trophies in this excellent competitive and social event. the Irish Teams are as follows: Good luck everyone!!
Apologies from the editor for the lack of update on winners and losers so far in the ICA Bonspiel and Competitions calendar.
Opening Bonspiel The season opened on 5th October with the opening bonspiel at Greenacres. A great turnout for the first outing of the season and we were delighted to welcome Niall McLoughlin for his ICA initiation…..(nothing sinister here – just his inaugural outing !!) There were great games and the winning team were Neil Fyfe, Nina Clancy, Niall McLoughlin and Frances Donald
Fyfe Trophy / Irish Open Championship Hot on the heels of the opening bonspiel was the Fyfe Trophy – donated by the Fyfe family in memory of John and Isobel – staunch supporters and participants for many years. The format was 4 x 4-end games spread over the day played on a schenkel basis. A great day was had by all and especially as we were able to welcome George Elliot, Ian Pringle and Michael Shaw for their first appearances as well as guests, Neil Murray and Madge Christie. Typically enough, three of them (sorry Neil and Ian) were on the medal podium where Gold, Silver and Bronze medals were awarded by Alastair Fyfe – representing the Fyfe family.
Fyfe Trophy Gold medallists, Neil Fyfe, Madge Christie, Nathan Furey and Michael ShawSilver medallists, Eoin McCrossan, Nina Clancy, John Reidy and John BurnsBronze Medallists, Trish Boult, George Elliot, Christine Furey and Arran Cameron
Winter Bonspiel at Hamilton: We headed to Lanarkshire Ice Rink for the winter bonspiel with 4 teams contesting for the spoils. In an incredibly tight finish, both sheets ended up with a winner 6-5, by 1 shot (Neil Fyfe on Sheet A and Bill Gray on B). Bill and his team ran out winners by virtue of having 1 end more. This was followed by an EGM called to help further some of our governance changes and it was great to see David Pakosh from Calgary on the Zoom call.
Winter Bonspiel Winners, Bill Gray, Nina Clancy, John Burns and Frances Donald
The competition between Irish Curlers and the Ardrossan Castle Curling Club has a long history dating back to 1861. On Sunday, the ICA team of Tommy Campbell, Christine Furey, Alison Barr and Clare McCormick set out to retain the Ardrossan – Belfast Trophy. They faced off against an Ardrossan team, skipped by Gordon Christie.
Lunch time!!
The ICA team started strongly leading 5-1 after three ends with Ardossan struggling with the speed of the ice. However, as they got their draw weight they picked up a 2 in the fourth end and a 4 in the 6th end to lead 7-6. The final end was tense with Tommy and his team leading 8-7 without the hammer. With all to play for, both teams produced some top class curling. With his last stone Tommy played a perfectly weighted double raise onto the button. This left Gordon with a very tricky run back to take the game to an extra end. The run back was unsuccessful and the ICA retained the trophy with a 9-7 victory.
Ice Time
Carolyn Hibberd, one of the founding members of the ICA, presented the trophy to the winning team. She said “It was an honour the present the Trophy to Ireland.”
The Irish men’s team played Poland in their semi-final this morning in Ostersund, Sweden with a place in the A league at stake. The team reported: “A super close game that saw the teams go into the 5th end break tied at 3 each. Poland were forced to a single in the 8th to go up 4-3. A scrappy 9th end led to Poland stealing a 2 and going into the final end with a 6-3 lead. The 10th end was a messy affair. Skip John Wilson attempted a peel weight treble take out that left 4 yellow stones in the house. However, one red remained and Poland took victory.”
There is still a bronze medal to be won and they play Spain at 1.30pm UK time. Best of luck boys!!
Craig Whyte, James Russell, Kyle Paradis and John Wilson
The Irish men, competing in the European B league championships, have been on a roll – qualifying directly to the semi-finals with a 6-1 record in the round robin. This is a fantastic achievement – supported by funding from Sport Ireland brokered by the Olympic Federation of Ireland – and the first time an Irish team has made the semi-finals since 2010. The holy grail is qualification for the Euro A league and the guys are one game away from achieving that with Turkiye or Poland their opponents in the semi-final. Given that Ireland’s men have been in the C league since 2012 before promotion in 2022, this represents a real step up and is the result of real resilience and dedication. Cheer them on at 0700 UK time on Saturday morning.
Three days is a long time in curling!! The Senior Men joined battle with Japan on Tuesday night in a significant game with qualification in mind. Right from the outset, the guys were a bit cagey and not quite hitting their straps and a tight game resulted which was not really what the doctor ordered. The scores remained close but could have been so much different had a hit by Skip Bill in the 2nd end not chipped a Japanese stone into shot position where a hit and stick would have left Ireland lying 4 or 5 putting pressure on Fujisawa-san.
Ireland and Japan following their Round Robin game
(Yep his younger daughter is Satsuki Fujisawa who skipped the Japanese women to Bronze in the 2018 Olympics).Ultimately Ireland needed a steal in the last to keep the game alive but Bill’s last draw just came up short and gave the opposition a hit to clear the irish counter to leave him with a single shot to win. Definitely a game to forget for the Irish.
GAME 5 ENGLAND 1 – 11 IRELAND
The Senior boys were back on the tricky and slow sheet G again the next day, taking on England. This was a much more promising effort with Ireland moving into a 5 shot lead in the first end and controlling the game all the way to the 7th when England conceded. The real drama at this point however was the Last Stone Draw and associated Draw Shot Challenge as with Japan having beaten Ireland and Poland beating Japan, if Ireland managed to beat Poland then Draw Shot could determine qualification. A nervy LSD by Bill and David resulted in our overall DSC being top of their group, just 2cm ahead of Poland so moving into the final RR game against Poland, it was to be a straight shootout for qualification.
GAME 6 IRELAND 4 – 7 POLAND
In a nutshell this was comfortably the most disappointing defeat in the recent team’s history – probably out ranking the disappointment of not beating Russia last year in Ostersund at the same stage. What made it worse was that the team played exceptionally well for 6 ends with total control and pressurised their Polish opponents in every end, leading 4-2 after the 6th. Then disaster struck in the 7th end. A series of missed shots or poor results from shots along with one poor tactical call resulted in Poland lying 4 when Bill came to play his first skip stone. A heavy multiple take out was called and executed well but only resulted in one Polish counter exiting the house and the others being spread around – lying three. The Polish skip played a draw to the back 4 to lie 4 and Bill was left to try and cover that stone and hope that it wouldn’t be able to be struck out. His draw was fractionally heavy and missed the break point which resulted in it taking a different path to similar shots which had been played well all game. The stone agonisingly slipped past the back 4 stone and gave the Polish skip an open draw for a 5, which he made. Ireland were now 7-4 down in the last and tried hard to manufacture a three but some strong hitting (and a couple of fortunate ones at that) by the Poles ran the boys out of stones. The dream was over for yet another year but this time it seemed so much more deflating coughing up a big end when they had been in control.
Post match catch up with our Polish friends (and conquerors!)
Poland have made great strides in the past couple of years and it was good to have a chat with them afterwards as their association with our great friend Tony Tierney who coached Agnieska (the Polish coach) and also with Gordon McIntyre who had coached some of the Polish Senior team as well as Ireland seniors over the years.
Reflecting on the week, Skip Bill said, ” As ever it has been a privilege to represent Ireland at a World competition and I am proud to be part of this band of brothers and we should be similarly proud of our efforts this week. Ultimately, I think we lacked some of the consistency we have had in previous campaigns and made a few too many errors at crucial times – something you can’t afford to do at this level if you want to progress, particularly as the standard at seniors is still increasing at the top end. Despite all of that, we’ve had a blast – made more new curling friends – had a barrel load of laughs at various times and seen some amazing scenery in and around Stavanger. We are now officially broke however!!. Onwards and upwards.”
