Greenwood recalls former champion in Inverness curling league
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Only two of the scheduled round five fixtures were played in the MacDonald Group curling Super League last week, with two of the skips who were involved doing no harm at all to their challenge for the league title.
With a shortage of curlers to complete rinks at this time of year, Super League leader Ruairidh Greenwood had to dive back into the history books to enlist the 2004 champion Alan Stanfield (Nairn) to complete his rink.
Stanfield took up his place to play alongside Neil MacArthur and Calum Greenwood for the tie against Dean Clark (Nairn).
Clark – with only one point from his previous four games – played well, and held the leaders to single shots in three of the seven ends.
But a triple count for Greenwood in end five moved the tie out of the Nairn skip’s reach, with the final scoreline coming in at 6–4 in favour of the table toppers, who earned their fifth win of the season to add another two points to their tally.
That means that Greenwood has a target on his back from every other curler who has eyes on a successful 2020, carrying a two-point lead into the second half of the campaign.
Two points further back in the league table are Neil Gallacher and Ian Fraser – with the Ross-shire skip’s fixture being one of those postponed.
Gallacher had already played his tie against Nairn’s Ali Asher at the end of November, and won it by the comfortable margin of 8–4.
The second half of the campaign restarts on Thursday, January 9 and throws up fixtures involving combinations of the top four.
Greenwood will take on Ali Fraser, who currently sits in fourth place in the Super League, while the two rinks just behind the leader will look to steal a march on the other when Gallacher faces Ian Fraser.
Action for 2019 was not quite finished though, as Ian Fraser met Ewan MacDonald last night for their early-start round five tie because of the juniors in MacDonald’s rink.
