Scotland Women secure European semi-final by downing Czechs
BySportsbeat
Published 23/11/2016 at 11:22 GMT
Skip Eve Muirhead wants her Scotland rink to maintain focussed despite a 10-5 victory over the Czech Republic booking them a spot in the semi-finals at the European Championships in Braehead.
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
Scotland opened this game strongly scoring one in the first end and stealing two in the second.
The Czechs got on the scoreboard with a two of their own in the third end, but another single score by the Scots in the fourth, followed by a blank fifth end gave Muirhead's team a 4-2 cushion at the break.
The Czechs got within one shot of the Scots with a single score in the sixth end, but in the seventh Muirhead hit out a Czech stone to score three and take a 7-3 lead.
Czech skip Anna Kubeskova drew her final stone of the eighth end into the house to score two from the end and, in the ninth, Muirhead had a straightforward draw to score three and seal the win, at 10-5.
The result means that Scotland have won all seven of their matches so far and can look forward to the semi-final, although Muirhead knows there is still work to do.
"That's us in the semi-final now, which is good," she said. "That was another solid performance against the Czech Republic – they're in the mix – so it's extremely important that you get on top of the play-off teams at this stage.
"Every game has been tough out there and we expect to play the last stone of the last end. We're not looking for six-end blow-outs at all.
"We want to be able to execute the shots when the pressure is on and that's what we've been doing really well.
"The important thing now is to keep the focus and that's where we've got a lot of people to help us. Glenn our coach has been there and done it and he's experienced a lot of high pressure situations like we're going to be going into.
"We're having a good laugh as well which always makes it fun. We're enjoying it and enjoying playing at home."
Meanwhile, Sweden sit second after a 6-1 victory over Switzerland while Russia are third following a 5-3 win against bottom-ranked Italy.
And Germany beat Denmark 4-3 to move level with their opponents in the standings with four wins and three losses.
© Sportsbeat 2016
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