A surge up the world rankings in the first month of the new season has given Hannah Fleming and her team new confidence as they bid to be the home representatives when Scotland hosts the European Curling Championships in November but first they must emerge from the lioness’s den.
Along with Jen Dodds, Alice Spence and Vicky Wright the 25-year-old, who shares with her rival skip Eve Muirhead the distinction of having led Scotland to victory at a World Junior Championship, has been in excellent form, climbing from 50th to 26th in those global standings on the back of reaching the final of the Stockholm Ladies Cup and the semi-final at last weekend’s Basel Women’s Masters.
However they were knocked out of the Swiss event by their Scottish rivals who have made an even more impressive start to the season, reaching the finals of three of the four events they have contested and claiming a first title of the season in Basel to stand top of this season’s money list.
Furthermore, when Team Fleming arrive at Dewar’s Centre, the venue for the domestic Euro Play-downs which indicators of what they are up against are everywhere, the venue’s ‘Muirhead Suite’ paying tribute to a curling dynasty and it is where the dominant figure in the Scottish women’s game grew up playing as she observed in saying: “Perth is a bit like a second home to me now. From a young age I used to watch my dad compete there so it is a very familiar and comfortable venue for me.”
Muirhead has every reason to feel at ease with how her overhauled set-up has coped this season too, new lead Lauren Gray and new coach Glenn Howard obviously settling in well, while Kelly Schafer has done a fine job standing in for the injured Anna Sloan at third.
“We are always looking to peak at the right time and so far this is working well for us and we have had a good start to the season and whilst we had a dip at Stockholm that gave us the opportunity to use that time with our coach Glenn Howard and as a result we noticed a big improvement last weekend and we hope to continue that improvement this week,” she observed.
As different as a best-of-five match head-to-head battle with one opponent is to tournament play, her experience also makes this relatively familiar competitive terrain.
“You can’t warm up into this event you have to produce the goods straight off the bat. It is an environment we have got used to so we will aim to kick off from the start,” Muirhead noted.
She knows, too, that they need to be wary.
“Hannah and her team have had a great start to their season reaching a final and meeting us in another semi-final and I know all the hard work they have been putting in,” said Muirhead.
“It will come down to who is performing best this weekend, so we can’t get complacent and we always treat every team with respect.”
Having already claimed victories over current women’s world champions Team Feltscher and European champions Team Sidorova this season Fleming is meanwhile entitled to feel her quartet has a real chance.
“To get to the Europeans would be amazing and to play on home soil is any athlete’s ideal scenario… but we are not getting ahead of ourselves,” she said.
“Coming into this event is was certainly a good confidence boost to be playing so well and beating world and European champions shows us that everything is coming together well.”
However she places that in the context of being fully aware of what confronts them.
“We are looking forward to the challenge but this weekend will not be easy by all means, Eve is at the top of her game and they are a great shot playing team,” she said.
“We have had a great few weeks and we have to play those shots to give them a good game.
“We are a new line-up this year and so are they so this will be different to last year and will be a fresh challenge.”
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