Canadian ladies visit by Fiona Wallace
Three members of Irvine Camera Club recently put their sports photography skills to use at Greenacres Curling Centre in Howwood.
Fiona Wallace, David Bell and Donnie Briggs stepped up to the hog lines to capture the action at the Greenacres leg of a friendship tour of Scotland by a visiting Canadian ladies’ team.
The tour additionally held matches at a further thirteen venues across Scotland.
After a morning social tour of Paisley Abbey, the players were piped into the Greenacres rink. The teams were then formally pip[ed onto to the ice with Provost Lorraine Cameron and Scottish curling legend Rhona Martin looking on. The first stone was thrown by 2024 Scottish Senior Women’s Champion, Karen Kennedy of Ayr.
Each of the six rinks set out to play eight ends, but a power outage halted official play with only five ends played. This meant an earlier than expected retreat to the bar where the emergency generator allowed festivities to continue, including Shooting the Broom – a game in which four shot glasses are filled and attached to a curling broom. Each rink then has to down their shots as an entity without spillage.
The early halt meant that this leg was declared a draw. The prize for winning the tour (the Muriel Fage Friendship Trophy) will go to the country with the most points after all legs are played. After the Greenacres leg the scores stood at 150 each, but Canada currently leads with 471 points to Scotland’s 389 with two matches to play.
To continue the friendship objective, a Scottish ladies contingent will head to Canada in 2025, and a USA tour party will be coming over 2026.
The RCCC very kindly made a donation to Irvine Camera Club for taking their event photos.
