MacDonald banks on spirit and body at Scottish Championships
HIS preparations have been undermined by injury, but Ewan MacDonald reckons he is fit enough to have a serious chance of completing a hat-trick of successive titles by leading his team to victory at the Scottish Curling Championships, which begin this weekend.
Having had a pain-killing injection to address the knee problem that has been troubling him throughout the season and will require surgery sooner rather than later, the 40-year-old from Inverness demonstrated his competitive instincts last weekend with a win at the Aberdeen City Open, a high-quality, mixed event.
That has set Team MacDonald, which now includes Dave Edwards, who was the beaten skip in the 2014 Scottish Championship final, as well as Ruairidh Greenwood and Euan Byers, up for the coming contest, where they will once again be looking to upset the players involved in the British Curling programme.
Heavily involved in his family’s financial advisory business, MacDonald knows that he and his men are hugely under-prepared by comparison with those funded opponents who have been playing in high-class events across the world. However, the three-time Winter Olympian is counting on their natural competitiveness to pull them through at the Dewar’s Centre in Perth over the coming week.
“The injury has obviously been a concern because I’ve been pretty much looking just to deliver the stone and get up as quickly as possible,” he explained.
“It’s not something that gives me too much bother other than when I’m fully flexed on the ice, but that is obviously crucial. I was taking painkillers throughout last weekend’s event in Aberdeen, but it really boosted the confidence to come through that.”
Reassured that he
is physically capable of undertaking the challenge of the week-long Scottish Championships, he believes his team can come through again.
“Obviously you want to go into it feeling you’ve thrown a lot of stones and are well prepared, and in the previous two years I’ve really done that from the start of January onwards, whereas I’ve gone a lot easier this time around,” he explained.
“However, there is a part of it that means you are hungry and keen to be playing.”
For MacDonald, Greenwood and Byers there is the added incentive of aiming to make up for what they feel was under-performance when representing Scotland at the last two World Championships, particularly last year in Nova Scotia.
“We were upset after what happened in Halifax and there would be nothing nicer than earning the chance to make up for that,” MacDonald said. “Obviously it is going to be pretty tough because Dave [Murdoch] and his boys have hit some form and I think all of them, Dave, Kyle [Smith] and Tom [Brewster] [have] tough teams.
“Bruce Mouat has a really good young team too, and they proved that at last year’s championships where they got into the one v two game.”
Due to that recent upsurge in form that MacDonald alluded to, Team Murdoch will go into the event as favourites, but the men’s event is set to be a more open contest than the women’s, in which it will be a major shock if Team Muirhead do not continue their dominance.
The Championships get under way tomorrow, and while it is perhaps disappointing in terms of reaching a wider audience that there will not even be live internet streaming of the contest, especially after the recent success of BBC Alba’s live coverage of the Perth Masters, the organisers are encouraging spectators to attend, particularly come finals day on Sunday, February 21.