Setting out in their opening match with only three players, Team Morrison endured a tough debut experience at the BKT Tires & OK Tire World Women’s Curling Championship as they went down to a 12-1 defeat to the team that has won the event the last two times it has been played.
With skip Rebecca Morrison, along with alternate Fay Henderson who had been getting ready to take her place, both sidelined because of COVID, while emergency replacement Beth Farmer was still on her way over from Scotland, it was left to Gina Aitken, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson to take on the might of Switzerland’s Team Tirinzoni. 
Aitken and Sinclair combined well to beat the vastly experienced Silvana Tirinzoni and teammate Alina Paetz in the pre-match last stone draw, earning them the hammer at the opening end where, with her team lying shot, Aitken had a difficult chance to draw for a second but was fractionally wide.
Over the next three ends, however, the Swiss women gradually applied the pressure, scoring twos, before they stole a four at the fifth end which meant the match was effectively over as they went into the midway break and they applied the coup de grace with another steal of two at the sixth.
While the result was disappointing, with Sinclair having to do a huge sweeping shift, the early finish was not the worst possible outcome as they anticipate Farmer hopefully being with them for the second day of action when they will meet the Czech Republic and Denmark.
“Obviously COVID has not been kind to us and we have had to open our world championship campaign with just three players, so there has been a lot of tough changes to make to our line up and our roles within the team,” said stand-in skip Aitken.
“We are really happy to get started but clearly it was not the ideal start for us and there are a few things we can turn up on to get ourselves closer for the next game.
“The rink is really nice here and we have got crowds in which is great to see again when you can feel the support from everyone, so we are really looking forward to seeing Beth when she arrives to join the team. We can’t thank her enough for being willing to jump in and help us, so we are really looking forward to a two game day and really stepping it up.” 
While Morrison had to keep tabs on the match from afar, she felt there were positive signs from a match they had gone into with relatively little to lose, taking all factors into account.
“That was always going to be a tough game even if we were at our full strength team,” she said.
“It’s not a bad game to get started on to play against the World Champions because it is zero pressure. If we are going to lose a game in these circumstances we are glad it is against one of the top teams and we can come back later in the week and give them a good game and gets some wins on the board against some key opposition.
“From watching the shot by shot I would say the scoreline didn’t fully reflect the game and the girls played some good shots out there. For the first few ends I was thinking it was going to be a tight game, so hopefully they will tighten up on a few things here and there for tomorrow, whether they have Beth with them or not.”
Team Scotland starting line-up (playing order TBC):
Gina Aitken - skip
Sophie Sinclair
Sophie Jackson
Beth Farmer
#curling #WWCC2022
Saturday 19 March
Scotland – Switzerland 1-12
Sunday 20 March
Scotland – Czech Republic
Scotland – Denmark
Monday 21 March
Scotland – Japan
Scotland – Sweden
Tuesday 22 March
Scotland – Korea
Scotland – Germany
Wednesday 23 March
Scotland – Norway
Scotland – Canada
Thursday 24 March
Scotland – Italy
Friday 25 March
Scotland – USA
Scotland – Turkey
Saturday 26 March
Qualification Games
Semi finals
Sunday 27 March
Bronze medal game
Gold medal game
