Oh how times have changed in the sport of curling since the current Scottish champion skip was a lad.

On Hogmanay Tom Brewster was in his bed hours before the bells, the festive period principally an opportunity for mid-season training as he and team-mates Glen Muirhead, Ross Paterson and Hammy McMillan redoubled their efforts to prepare for a successful defence of their title at what is a crucial stage in this Olympic cycle.

The momentum was already with them, having won the three-way battle with domestic rivals Team Murdoch and Team Smith to represent Scotland at the European Championships in November before, in December, beating Murdoch’s defending champions in the final of the Karuizawa International in Japan.

However they were also aware that there was much to work on, even before their strange performance at those home European Championships at Braehead, where they beat all three medal winning teams during the round-robin stages but failed to get to the knockout rounds.

That event was a deeply disappointing experience all-round, poor attendances just one of a number of elements that meant the Scots felt there was no sense of having the sort of advantage playing at home should bring.

Much of that was beyond their control, but they have identified what they can do to enhance their own chances and that has seen them lean more heavily upon the support available from Misha Botting, British Curling’s sports psychologist, since a disappointing performance at the Swiss Cup in Basel earlier in the season, where Team Murdoch reached the final while Team Smith also reached the play-offs, knocking Team Brewster out on the way.

The immediate response was good, but it was clear after that Braehead experience, that there was still work to be done.

“I thought we played great at the European play-offs and we made a ton of shots at the Europeans, we just didn’t box very clever,” he reckoned.

“We learned a lot in a few areas and we’ve worked on that really hard since. We knew some of those areas before, I just think maybe we neglected them a wee bit and we’ve worked on them really solid and will keep working on them to the end of the season and it’s paying off.”

That is where Botting came in.

“We haven’t done a lot of work with Misha in the first half of the season because we’ve been away on the road so much and maybe that’s partially our fault,” Brewster acknowledged.

“We maybe should have asked to have him on some of our trips. Sometimes it’s just us not thinking we could do that. However when we spoke about Japan after the Euros we decided to make that happen.”

A big part of that is direct communication, how they call their sweeping for example, but there is also the subliminal stuff, when the wrong messages are conveyed, potentially undermining confidence and Brewster admitted there are times when, in particular, he and Glen Muirhead, his team’s third and, effectively, second in command, have been inclined to allow irritation to be too visible.

“It’s simple little things, not a lot, because at the end of the day sometimes you don’t know you’re doing it. It’s just a natural tendency,” Brewster admitted.

“We’re just both really passionate and strong-minded players and we know that. Part of the problem is we’re more annoyed with ourselves when we miss a bad shot.”

The benefit of getting that side of things right was evident at last weekend’s Perth Masters as they extricated themselves from tricky situations when having to steal shots at the final ends of both their quarter-final, against China’s Team Rui and semi-final, against Germany’s Team Baumann.

In the final, too, he reckoned that collectively they played only two scrappy ends, yet it was the second of those that won the match for them as Muirhead identified what Brewster described as the ‘shot to nothing’ that could turn a potential loss into the score of three that won them the match with his final stone of the end.

“As soon as Glen suggested it we thought it was there,” he said, giving full credit where it is due.

“It was just a case of hitting it is as hard as I could and sometimes it’s just knowing how stones react off one another. Sometimes you don’t see it straightaway, so thankfully Glen pointed it out.”

With back to back tournament wins behind them the reigning Scottish champions will put themselves in a formidable position in terms of potential Winter Olympic qualification should they defend their title, but Brewster is not getting ahead of himself in that regard.

“We expect strong showings from the other guys, Dave (Murdoch), Kyle (Smith), Bruce Mouat… Grant Hardie put in a solid performance this weekend making the quarters. It can come down to one stone,” he said.

“If we don’t win another tournament this season we don’t. I’ve always been a shot at a time, end at a time, game at a time. I don’t look too far ahead.”