An extra end victory over an experienced Australian partnership saw Scotland still in credit as they ended the second day of the World Mixed Doubles Championship in Sweden.
On their debut at the event, Sophie Jackson and Duncan McFadzean had suffered their first defeat at the Oestersund Arena earlier in the day when they were unable to complete the comeback after fighting back from 4-1 down against Korea’s Jiyoon Kim and Byeongjin Jeong to level the match with two ends to play.
However, they rebounded well from that 6-4 loss to produce a battling performance against Australia’s Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt, who were taking part in these championships for the fifth time, reaching the semi-finals five years ago.
As they had done earlier in the day, the Scots fell behind early on in spite of having started with last stone advantage at the opening end, but this time around they never let the deficit extend beyond a shot and, as they had done against Czechia in their opening match, they gained the upper hand with a steal of two on their opponents’ powerplay at the seventh end.
The Aussies showed their resolve when they squeezed in a second shot with a well-weighted tap back at the eighth end to take the match into extra time. 
However, the Scottish pair managed the extra end well and Jackson held her nerve to deliver the double takeout with her final stone that secured the 7-5 win.
“We made that quite a long day for ourselves having had to fight in both games,” Jackson said afterwards.
“We got ourselves back to a really good spot in the Korea game and felt quite good about being back to peels.
“Similar to the game yesterday, we felt we could go on from there, but unfortunately came out with a loss.”
She noted that a key learning from that encounter; allied to having had to fight back from being 3-0 down before beating Czechia in their opener, was that they need to make stronger starts at this level of the game, saying: “We knew that what we needed to do was come out and have a better first half against Australia and that’s what we did.”
Having represented Scotland at five Women’s World Championships, Jackson also observed that while this had been their first two game day of the competition, the nature of the schedule allowed them more opportunity to recover from that setback against the Koreans.
“It’s nice in mixed doubles,” she said.
“We have quite a big gap to recover between games, so we got a good bit of food in and some sleep before coming back refreshed ready to take the second half of our Korea game into that Australia game.”
That helped ensure they were in the right frame of mind to deal with the pressure of a tense finish and Jackson was pleased with the way they handled the key moments.
“We’re really confident in our strategy with how we’re playing the powerplays right now, whether with or without hammer and we’re happy with how they’re going, managing to build good ends with the hammer and also put the opposition under pressure when they’re looking for their two,” she said.
“We then had to go to an extra end in that game, but we were quite happy that we were hopefully going to be left with a shot in the extra end.
“The way we played the end out, the tactical decisions that we made, it was always going to leave me with a shot, whether it was a double for the game or a draw to the pin and we were pretty happy we would be able to make either of those.
“Making that double takeout was really nice for the confidence, though and that sets us up nicely for the week.
“Obviously that’s not the kind of shot I’m used to playing as a lead in the women’s game, but it’s good to know that you can produce those shots at the end to win the game.”
They also know that winning the last stone draws ahead of both matches could prove helpful, with draw shot challenge records being totalled up as potential tie-breakers to decide which teams will proceed to play-offs.
“Good draw shots are always going to be nice to keep us up there,” said Jackson.
“This week looks like it’s going to be quite tight with the win and loss columns, so if we can keep that going it’ll be nice.”
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The round-robin continues until April 25, with the 20 competing teams divided into two pools of 10, playing nine matches each ahead of the play-offs and medal matches which take place on April 27.
Group A: Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkiye.
Group B: Australia, Canada, China, Czechia, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden, USA.
Please click here for LIVE streaming of all games on The Curling Channel.
Selected games are also available on the BBC iPlayer, BBC Scotland website and app.
Please click here for more event information and results.
Scotland Team
Sophie Jackson
Duncan McFadzean
Michael Goodfellow Coach
Ross Paterson Coach
Schedule (BST) & Results
Saturday 20 April
Session 2
Scotland – Czechia 7-3
Sunday 21 April
Session 4
Scotland – Korea 4-6
Session 6
Scotland – Australia 7-5
Monday 22 April
Session 8 – 13.00
Scotland – USA
Tuesday 23 April
Session 10 – 09.00
Scotland – Canada
Session 12 – 17.00
Scotland - Netherlands
Wednesday 24 April
Session 14 – 13.00
Scotland – New Zealand
Thursday 25 April
Session 16 – 09.00
Scotland – China
Session 18 – 17.00
Scotland – Sweden
Friday 26 April
09.00
Qualification Games
17.00
Semi Finals
Saturday 27 April
09.00
Bronze Medal Game
13.00
Gold Medal Game
Image: World Curling
