SCOTS AIM TO HIT TOP GEAR IN WORLD CHAMPS PLAY-OFFS

Scotland skip Hugh Nibloe has called on his team to rattle through the gears and regain top form after they qualified for the play-offs despite suffering double defeat on the last day of the round-robin stages of the Kuntai World Wheelchair Championships in Beijing.

Having done the hard work over the previous five days, Nibloe and teammates Gregor Ewan, David Melrose and Meggan Farrell-Dawson suffered a disappointing 8-3 defeat to a Slovakian team that had won just two of its previous matches, before going down 8-5 to the United States who have joined them in the play-offs.

Those losses left them in the lowest of the qualifying spots, but with the knockout stages bringing different pressures to bare Nibloe believes they can bounce back as they have already done repeatedly throughout the event.

“I don’t think we got out of the traps well against Slovakia this morning so we didn’t settle into the game,” he said.

“Against the United States we were better, but a couple of breaks didn’t go our way.iugh

“We still feel, though, that there are a couple of gears we can go up and we’ll need to do that against Sweden in the quarter-finals.

“The good thing is we are in the play-off contingent and everybody there has a chance of a medal, so we’ll be giving it our all and going for it.”

Reflecting on an intense week of round-robin action, Paralympic Head Coach Sheila Swan registered satisfaction with the outcome, but is similarly hoping they will find the sort of form that saw them hand hosts China, who finished the round-robin section in top spot, one of only two defeats.

“We’re delighted to have qualified for the play-offs. Some of the games didn’t go the way we wanted them to when we had opportunities and didn’t capitalise on all of them, but that’s one of those things and the main thing was to achieve our principal objectives which were, first of all to avoid relegation and then to get into the top six to reach the play-offs,” she said.

“It’s not necessarily the way we wanted to do it and there’s a bit of frustration that we’ve not performed to the level we’re capable of, but we are now hoping for them to fulfil their potential when they meet Sweden in the quarter-finals.”

Scotland Team,
Hugh Nibloe
Gregor Ewan
David Melrose
Meggan Dawson Farrell
Charlotte McKenna (alternate)

Results 6W-5L
Scotland v Norway 6-4
Scotland v Italy 10-4
Scotland v Korea 6-8
Scotland v Canada 7-4
Scotland v Switzerland 11-7
Scotland v Sweden 2-9
Scotland v Latvia 10-1
Scotland v RCF 4-8
Scotland v China 3-2
Scotland v Slovakia 3-8
Scotland v USA 5-8

Final round-robin standings (W-L)

Q China 9-2
Q RDF 8-3
Q Sweden 8-3
Q United States 8-3
Q Canada 7-4
Q Scotland 6-5
Norway 5-6
Latvia 4-7
Korea 4-7
Slovakia 3-8
Italy 2-9
Switzerland 2-9

Results