Scotland to battle for bronze after European semi-final defeat

The Scots entered their last four tie as favourites to reach the final on home ice having gone through the round-robin stage undefeated, but couldn't match their opposition after the Russians took an early lead.

They stole two points at the start of the game, and while Scotland responded immediately with two shots of their own in the second to level the scores, Russian skip Victoria Moiseeva hit out a Scotish stone to score three points and regain her rink's advantage.

Muirhead reduced the deficit in the fourth to 5-4, only for Moiseeva to hit another for three points, before Scotland once again closed the gap to two points heading into the eighth.

But it wasn't to be as Moiseeva capped off a sterling performance with yet another hit for three, forcing the Scots to concede the tie.

"We're gutted of course, we just got outplayed there today and personally I didn't have the best game," said Muirhead.

"We just always seemed to be chasing it from the start. We got our twos back really well and played some great ends to do that.

"But apart from that, we just seemed to be constantly chasing it. They played really well and we just weren't good enough.

"The three in the sixth obviously didn't help matters. Once they got up they just tried to keep it simple and we were trying to chase, chase, chase and we just got outplayed."

Muirhead's rink will face the Czech Republic in tonight's bronze medal match, and she insists they will give it everything they've got to land a medal in front of their home crowd.

"The bronze medal game is only in a few hours' time and we've got to re-group quickly and fight for the medal that's still at stake," she said.

"We're going to go back on knowing we have to play well to beat the Czech team and get that medal. We'll be playing the very best we can to do that."

Sportsbeat 2016