FRESH from joining the elite that have skipped Scottish representative rinks at a senior international championship Dave Edwards has called for his sport's authorities to do more to protect the domestic game.
The Aberdeen-based curler last night got off to a solid start at the Mercure Perth Masters with a 6-3 win over Thomas Lovold's rink in a strange echo of his experience at the recent European Championships in Switzerland where they beat another Norwegian team, Thomas Ulsrud's world champions, in their opening match.
Thereafter Edwards and his men had a tough time at the Europeans, ultimately having to win a play-off match for seventh place to protect Scotland's place at this season's World Championships, but he believes that experience will stand them in good stead this weekend and beyond.
"We've always been there or thereabouts for a number of years and had wins against the likes of Ulsrud and Niklas Edin (the top Swedish rink), but never quite made the breakthrough when it mattered here, so we've just got to build on it.
"There were so many close matches where the results could have gone the other way that they might have gone the other way with a little bit more curling under our belt and that bit more experience.
"It's our first experience of arena ice as well. The ice here in the club is fantastic, but it's a different feel and a different curl, so it's one to put in the folder and pack away."
That it was all so new for them was symptomatic of a system that has inevitably favoured the few who have been selected for the elite British performance programme and have consequently been able to prepare as full-time sportspeople, which meant that Dave Murdoch has invariably skipped the Scottish teams that have taken part in European and World Championships in the past decade.
That reaped its rewards in prize-winning terms when Murdoch's rink claimed a silver medal at last year's Winter Olympics, but there is growing concern about the impact on domestic competition, to the extent that Edwards expressed fears regarding the quality of domestic competition.
"We have to have events like this and the Edinburgh International and the Scottish curling tour as well. It's really important that these remain for the health of the game in Scotland," he said.
"We should be doing everything we can to make sure those events are supported and we should be encouraging the foreign teams to come across here and play so it's not just the performance teams that get the opportunity by going abroad.
"The teams here at home should get the chance to enter these events, play these foreign teams and get the experience. If we lose these events we really run the danger of going down to a very, very small number of competitive teams."
He believes a factor in that is a potential imbalance in the risk and reward ratio that sees fewer players prepared to pay substantial entry fees when the odds appear to be stacked against them.
"The Perth Masters has always had a waiting list in the past, but this time they've been scraping around to get a team at the very last minute. I think there's a number of factors involved: one's cost, another's time and the elite element in sport has obviously discouraged some I guess," he observed.
"I don't have the answers to how we keep these events going, but more has to be done to keep tournaments going. Cost is the major thing. Our national championship this year is costing us £500 which is a significant sum of money for people to enter, especially if they think their chances are limited."
Twice a former winner here Edwards is leading one of 10 Scottish teams that are up against a powerful overseas contingent competing at the Dewar's Centre, comprising seven Swiss rinks, three from Canada, including Team Gushue, the tournament favourites, all three medal winning rinks from this season's Pacific Asia Championships, from China Japan and Korea, two from each of Norway and Russia and one each from the USA, the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden, plus an international select skipped by American Pete Fenson.
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