The scene at Perth’s Dewar’s Centre could hardly have seemed more unlikely in a modern sporting context as, after the first leg of their best-of-three encounter, the rival teams enjoyed a post-match drink together, their skips laughing heartily with one another.

Tom Brewster and Dave Murdoch may have grown up playing together, but so, too, did Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic and the men vying for the world number one spot in tennis have admitted their friendship has effectively had to be put on hold while they are competing.

An invalid comparison because the relative profile of the sports means less is at stake?

Consider that at the age of 38 Murdoch, who has newly become a dad, is dependent on curling for his living.

Consider, too, the potential for enmity generated by the way Murdoch was belatedly parachuted into the double Scottish champion rink that Brewster had assembled ahead of the last Winter Olympics and was then appointed skip for the trip to Sochi while his rival was dropped to the bench.

In spite of the team’s success in picking up British Curling’s best medal since Rhona Martin’s ‘stone of destiny’ many in the sport were deeply unhappy about what happened, but both have repeatedly insisted that their personal relationship was undamaged and Saturday’s evidence supported their claims.

Even so what has been achieved in the interim by Brewster has been quite a response.

The older of the two at 42 and for a long time the nearly man of Scottish curling, he would have been forgiven for accepting that he had taken his shot at glory and it was not to be.

Instead he went back to where he had been six years ago when forming Greg Drummond, Scott Andrews and Michael Goodfellow into a combination that would reach two World Championship finals on the back of Brewster’s long-pursued dream of becoming Scottish champions, as well as claiming that Olympic silver.

This time around Glen Muirhead - big brother of Eve who dominates the Scottish women’s scene - Ross Paterson and Hammy McMillan - another youngster with a famous curling name - were drawn together and the current Scottish champions will now represent their country on home ice in the European Curling Championships at Braehead Arena next month.

At no point, however, has Brewster countenanced talk of any sort of vindication, preferring instead to feed off the excitement of what they have achieved right now after converting the 1-0 lead held on Saturday evening, to a 2-0 overall victory.

“Just representing our country, that’s what I play for. It’s another chance to do that and that for me, in front of a home crowd is fantastic,” he said.

Brewster knows a battle lies ahead in terms of selection for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

“There’s other parts of the sport and Dave’s having a great year on tour and they’re playing in some of the bigger events,” he noted.

“We’ve just failed to get to some of the Slams by a place and he’s in them so he’s in a good position as well. We’re not daft, we need to keep working hard.”

However that is not yet his priority, this rare opportunity to lead a Scottish team on home ice having been a major goal in itself, not least because he is among the few in the sport to have experience of the venue, having played there in three successive national championships around the turn of the Millennium, while he is particularly proud of having earned the right to be there.

“I know the arena,” he pointed out.

“I lost my first Scottish final there so I can think back to then when I thought I’d never get the chance to win it again.

“Now I’ve won it four of the last six years, but that’s the first time I’ve won a European play-off. The other times I’ve gone to the Europeans I’ve been selected to go as the Olympic team or fifth man with Dave Edwards.

“So I’ve been in and around the Europeans, but to qualify and do it the way we’ve done it, we’ve worked hard to get to where we are now. We know we’ve had an up and down season, we know we’ve had a lot to improve on, but we’ve improved in the right areas.”

With a more team-focused selection system for the Olympics this time around there is no real prospect of him being subjected to anything similar to what happened in 2014 should his rink prove strongest over the coming season, but Brewster is adamant that such considerations remain far from his mind.

“I’m not really thinking about that to be honest. This is Europeans. This was a goal and we’ve achieved it,” he said.

“It’s about peaking at the right time for us. We were beaten in the final of this last year, then we won the Scottish and that was the two events we had to peak for. That was our whole goal last season and everything else along the way was just about getting to these two stages.”

He admits there was disappointment among them at the way they performed at the World Championships this year where they finished seventh of the 12 competing teams, but reckons they will be readier at Braehead.

“The guys learned a massive amount at the Worlds and we’ve put a lot of that into effect, so we just need to take that forward and it will be great to play in front of a home crowd,” he said.