As he and his colleagues scrabbled to find replacements to complete the 32-team field for curling's prestigious Mercure Perth Masters yesterday the tournament chairman suggested that the problems they had encountered reflected the need for "a complete overhaul" of how the sport is run.

 

Pete Loudon, the former world and European champion, was still drawing satisfaction from the quality of the field assembled, but acknowledged that it was not ideal to still be assembling the International Select that they are opting to put on the ice to fill the gap left by a late withdrawal.

"We haven't finalised it yet, but I'm 10th on the list at the moment so hopefully we won't have to revert to that," the chairman said with a reassuring chuckle.

The event has also been affected by a direct scheduling clash this year with the big money Continental Cup in Canada which has taken away David Murdoch's Winter Olympic silver medal winning rink.

"That has meant we are also without Mike McEwen's team (one of the the top Canadian rinks), as well as Thomas Ulsrud's (the reigning world champion Norwegian rink) and Niklas Edin's (the current European and former world champions from Sweden), who have all been regulars at our event but we still have a high class field," said Loudon.

He believes the favourites are Brad Gushue's men, one of two Canadian rinks taking part, while there are 11 countries represented in total, including all three medal winning teams from this season's Pacific Asia Championships, from China, Japan and Korea, a string of leading European contenders and strong representation from both the USA and Russia.

The Scottish contingent will include the new rink being skipped by Tom Brewster - the fifth member of the British team that achieved that success in Sochi - which has already won two significant titles this season, Ewan MacDonald's Scottish champions and Dave Edwards' team that beat those on the full-time funded programme to win a play-down competition to represent Scotland at this season's European Championships.

However there has been some difficulty in achieving the preferred balance of domestic teams alongside international contenders, to the extent that no fewer than 21 of the 32 teams in the line-up are from overseas.

That resulted in tournament officials raising concerns as long ago as the start of this season when they began marketing this event, noting at that point that: "These are challenging times for Scottish event organisers in terms of attracting home grown teams to their event."

Loudon elaborated on that yesterday, claiming that the difficulty extends beyond this tournament which is the biggest international open held in Scotland every year.

"The Scottish Championships used to be the one competition you were always desperate to win, but I don't know if the top teams have the same desire even to play in that now because there are too many other things going on," he said.

His comments reflect what seems to be a growing concern about a perceived disconnection between the leading players, who receive substantial funding to train and play full-time and the wider curling community.

Loudon noted that the Finnish rink skipped by Aku Kauste, which will be in action in Perth this weekend and won the other big open Scottish event this season at Murrayfield, then earned a place at the World Championships after winning the B division at the Europeans, offer evidence that teams which "don't look like a bunch of athletes" can curl effectively and well.

Furthermore he is clearly of the view that it is vital in terms of generating team spirit that players are forced to earn their opportunities.

"I played with three of the best curlers in the sport when we won the world title," he said of playing alongside MacDonald, who was then just 21, Warwick Smith and Hammy McMillan back in 1999.

"Within that team everyone knew their job and their role and when things happened you knew how they would react to the adversity."

Loudon added that they formed that bond by finding ways of funding their own trips to Canada and elsewhere to gain experience, which is very different to the way the current top Scottish players operate.

He accepts that this is a different era, but takes particular exception to the centralised system that is in operation with the leading players based at Stirling.

"If there's funding available we should be looking more regionally as they do in other sports," he said.

Looking beyond this weekend he added that there could be a cost consideration affecting that aforementioned lack of appetite among up and coming players.

"We can't even get a sponsor for our own Scottish Championships and you have to ask why," Loudon observed.

The Mercure Perth Masters gets underway this evening with the first matches on the ice at 4.45pm.