Veteran internationalist Gregor Ewan admitted that he and partner Meggan Dawson-Farrell will have to learn quickly as they adapt to a new discipline at the first ever World Wheelchair Curling Mixed Doubles Championship in Finland.
The Scottish representatives were behind from the outset in their opening match against Switzerland and while they rallied well after the mid-interval break to narrow the gap, their opponents proved too strong over the closing ends in running out 10-5 winners.
While the way they responded to falling behind early on offered some encouragement, Ewan explained that they need to adjust quickly to all aspects of mixed doubles play, right down to the basics of clock management. 
“It was a bit of an eye opener with the time clocks,” said the three time Paralympian.
“The first four ends I thought we had to zoom through it, because we were not going to have enough time on the clocks, but lo and behold we came off after 8 ends and still had five minutes on the clock
“We need to learn more about this game, it is a big learning curve and we definitely can improve, need to improve and will improve.”
He expressed some satisfaction with the way they performed after a half-time team talk with coaches Sheila Swan and Nancy Smith.
“After having a good chat at the half way break with our coaches, discussing strategies and scenarios we decided to call a powerplay to put them on the back foot, which is exactly what we did,” said Ewan.
“Meggan played a brilliant first shot and I managed to get a good couple of shots in there, forced them to chase the game at that end and we managed to score a three because of them making misses.”
The Scottish pair also lost their second match of the day to Hungary, going down by a 7-4 margin.
“It was good. Gregor and I worked well,” Dawson-Farrell said afterwards.
“We managed to get on the scoreboard. Unfortunately we gave up a couple, got a couple back and we fought to the end. 
“There are good things to take away. We just have to go out again tomorrow and play the way we know we can play and make the shots.”
Scotland will face Japan and Italy on the second day of competition.
The event, held at the Kisakallio Sports Institute in Lohja, Finland (30 April – 5 May), features 18 national teams, split into two groups of nine, competing in a round-robin format, ahead of knockout play-offs for the medals.
Scotland Wheelchair Curling Mixed DoublesTeam
Meggan Dawson-Farrell
Gregor Ewan
Saturday 30 April
Scotland – Switzerland 5-10
Scotland – Hungary 7-4
Sunday 1 May
Scotland – Japan
Scotland – Italy
Monday 2 May
Scotland – Estonia
Tuesday 3 May
Scotland – Korea
Scotland – Finland
Wednesday 4 May
Scotland – Sweden
Thursday 5 May
Semi finals
A1 v winner of B2 v A3
B1 v winner of A2 v B3
Finals
#curling #WWhMDCC2022