Olympic medallists Team Muirhead offered themselves some early season encouragement when they reached the final of their first event of the season, a top flight Grand Slam of Curling event in Canada.

The quartet who were all involved in that bronze medal campaign in Sochi, were in action for the first time since being told in the summer that they had been selected to represent Great Britain again at next year’s Winter Olympics in PyeongChang and after taking time to find their rhythm they were typically competitive.

After losing two of their first three matches in the round-robin stages they defeated current world champions Team Homan to set up a tie break meeting with another leading Canadian rink Team Tippin, winning it 5-4 to claim the last available place in the quarter-finals where they then beat Switzerland’s 2015 world champions Team Paetz.

While they were then knocked out by Sweden’s Team Hasselborg they showed their fighting qualities in the semi-final, battling back from four shots down with two ends to play to miss out by the narrowest of margins, 6-5.

“After taking a bit of time to reflect, reaching a Grand Slam semi final on our first outing of the season is no mean feat. The competition out here is the best in the world with the highest level of curling there is,” said skip Eve Muirhead.

“The couple of losses we did pick up in the group stages were down to an extra end so we really were close with them too and our team is in a good place going into Edmonton next week and the remainder of the season.”