Dave Edwards and his rink drew deserved congratulations for their performance in yesterday's vital European Championship play-off but their campaign has raised questions about the British qualifying system after the prospect of England challenging their neighbours for a place at this season's World Championships became a genuine possibility.
The win for Edwards' rink over Germany's Alexander Baumann consigned their victims to eighth place in the A Division standings, so they will face a challenge with the winners of the B Division for a place at the World Championships this season, a fate which would have befallen Scotland, had they been beaten.
The play-off was a highly pressurised affair and Soren Gran, head coach of Great Britain, was pleased with how the Scots coped. "They got it together to secure our World Championship spot," said the Swede. "The guys probably produced their best game of the week and the pressure was huge, so I'm impressed with how they handled the situation; hopefully it will be a good experience for the future."
It was, though, Gran who had warned ahead of the event of the risk within the Scottish qualifying system which enabled Edwards' essentially amateur rink - it is not funded by the British programme - to beat full-time professional curlers to the right to take part.
Edwards had looked set to make a nonsense of such considerations when his rink beat Thomas Ulsrud's world champion Norwegians in their opening match but they would win only twice more in the round-robin section, losing six, to be left in a precarious situation.
The emergence of England - they topped their table in the B Division to have a chance of going into the three-match World Championship play-off series with the team finishing eighth in the A Division - had the potential to embarrass the Scots and not just because there is only one rink in the whole of England - it is in Tunbridge Wells - on which competition regularly takes place.
In a reversal of what happens in some other sports, such as hockey, Scotland has been designated by the British authorities as the team that can earn points for Olympic qualification through performances at World Championships.
That will only apply at the 2016 and 2017 World Championships, but the fact England have come closer to turning the tables than ever before in the year that Dave Murdoch and Eve Muirhead - she advanced to the medal play-offs at these European Championships yesterday - ended the 12-year wait for curling medal success at the Winter Olympics, naturally raises questions.
Having attended his first major international championship since he was appointed performance director for both the Scottish and British development programmes, Graeme Thompson acknowledged that yesterday, but said it would be wrong to react in knee-jerk fashion.
"England have done really well and we are really pleased for British curling that they performed the way they did, but we were still a few results away from a Scotland-England meeting," he pointed out. "In any case, while Scotland is the points carrier for this Olympic cycle, who represents Great Britain at the Olympics is then up for discussion. It can be decided through a selection process which could involve coach's picks or introducing playoffs, but there is time to assess all of that."
That same logic pertains when it comes to Scottish representation at major championships, but Thompson believes there is a strong case for retaining the existing competitive qualifying system.
"I really admire Dave and his team who were under pressure and reacted as well as possible," he said. "They all played well but Dave, in particular, produced 84 per cent as a skip in that play-off match against Germany, making big calls and big shots; they did a really good job, stealing at three ends.
"I think they will be disappointed by their seventh-place finish, but it was very tight and, if a couple of close results had gone their way, they could have been in the medal play-offs. Let's not forget that they won the right to be here fair and square too, under systems that have been in place for a few years, so change to that is not at the forefront of my mind.
"You can perhaps describe them as an amateur rink when we have full-time professionals not involved, but they still finished seventh in Europe which, outside Canada, is the strongest competition in the world."
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