Team Muirhead will be upgraded from being the obvious choice to represent Great Britain at next year’s Winter Olympics to an automatic selection if they win a medal at next month’s World Championships and the prospects of fellow Sochi medallists joining them increased greatly when Dave Murdoch and his men won their first Scottish Championships for four years.

While her team was tested more than it has been for some time with former team-mates Claire Hamilton, part of the bronze medal quartet in Sochi, Sarah Reid and Kerry Barr all part of a team that pushed them very hard in the qualifying rounds, while Hannah Fleming’s new line-up gave them a decent battle, losing just 6-4 in the final, Eve Muirhead remains peerless within the domestic game. Ever present at European and World Championships over recent years they ought, at the very least, to secure the Olympic qualifying points in Beijing next month that will take her to a third Games next year at the age of 26.

For all that he has been around a good deal longer and has his sights set on a fourth Olympics, it has been a very different story for Murdoch since they reached that final in Sochi, to the extent that their forthcoming trip to their World Championships in April will be their first in Scotland shirts in the interim.

They earned the opportunity with a commanding victory over Bruce Mouat’s youngsters who were, until the weekend, World Junior champions and who won the World University Games immediately before arriving in Perth.

Mouat and his colleagues Bobby Lammie, Derrick Sloan and Gregor Cannon, had previously shocked Teams Brewster and Smith, who have between them represented Scotland at the last three major championships, in the knockout stages. However Team Murdoch came close to registering a big count in the first end, ultimately having to settle for a two which was matched by their opponents at the second, before they then asserted themselves once and for all with a four at the third on their way to a 10-4 victory.

“We’re the experienced team and we’ve been here on the big stage in so many pressured events,” Murdoch said afterwards.

“It was Bruce’s first time in the Scottish Championships and sometimes if things don’t go well for you and the other team’s on fire there’s not a lot you can do.

“They should hold their heads high, though. They’re a fantastic team who have just come off a huge win at the World University Games and I see a bright future for them.”

However as regards the immediate future he believes he and team-mates Greg Drummond, Scott Andrews and Michael Goodfellow have timed their return to the big events perfectly.

“There’s a lot at stake,” he said.

“If we can take this form into the World Championships then it will be hard to look past us but before that we have to focus on having a great chance at the World Championships.

“We have high expectations and I think we should have high expectations. Last time we were at the Worlds we topped the round-robin and ended up with a bronze medal.”

He also believes Scottish curling as a whole is as good as it has been in his time competing to go to Olympics.

“I’m seeing a lot of good things. Every quadrennial we learn from the past cycle and this one is the same again,” said Murdoch.

“We’re seeing all those little improvements and I think that’s starting to show. You’re starting to see the Smiths, Mouats, ourselves, Brewster, there are four or five good teams out there and some young juniors who took a lot of wins as well, so for me looking at that it’s fantastic that our sport is producing so many good youngsters and there’s another big crop coming up soon.

“It’s great so see. So I’m glad the programme’s in such a good place and I just hope the funding can continue and we can keep pushing on from there because Scotland’s been a dominant force in curling for a long, long time, but with so many countries around the world challenging that now it’s hard to stay up there, so it’s up to us to keep pushing boundaries.”

That message was reinforced by Graeme Thompson, British Curling’s performance director, but he stressed that the focus must now be on Olympic qualification.

“We’ve just found out who’s going to take Scotland’s places to try to complete the qualification job. Two good winners,” he said.

“Muirhead and Murdoch are obviously the medallists from Sochi, but it has been a really good fight. In the women’s we’ve seen a rise in a couple of teams and even this weekend our girls have picked up a silver at the World Junior Championships.

“We had another team here skipped by Gina Aitken who claimed a World Junior silver medal two years ago and in the men’s you only have to look at the world rankings – 12 (Murdoch), 14 (Smith) and 18 (Brewster) are our top three, while Bruce Mouat’s has just jumped across two of them.

“So overall we’re in good heart, but right now we’re just focused on qualifying for the Olympics.”