Martin vs Shepherd

We met only once last season during the season opener, where we went down by a score of 6-4. It took over a year to get the rematch, though the Shepherd rink is arguably weaker now after Elgie poached off Mike Shepherd. Ikey loses the toss once again. For the record, we've only had hammer in the first end once so far this season.

End 1: The end starts warily as rocks slip behind the tee-line. Then a draw that sails through the house by ix3y made the situation really difficult as it allowed Shepherd to sit buried. icky's final rock was an attempted angle raise takeout that misses. Matt Shepherd draws for his three.

End 2: With Shepherd sitting 3 in the top of the house, ikey's attempted double/triple goes between the opposition rocks after starting it wide. After Matt's guard is too wide, icky has the same shot and executes a double. Matt comes back with a hit and stick to sit two. On icky's last, he plays a double and roll out to blank. Disaster averted but we still trail 3-nil.

End 3: Although iszy continues to be sharp, the middle of the line up struggles, leading to Shepherd sitting 3 going into the last rock. Icky's "oh shit" double is sucessful and we escape another potential disaster with 1.

End 4: Team Martin finally puts together a good end. Coupled by some misses by Team Shepherd, we steal an unlikely 3 to go up 4-3.

End 5: This end was again shaping up to be a disaster with the opposition sitting 3 going into ikey's first stone. Ikey gets one rock to go on a missed double, but we luck out when the opposition hits and rolls out. This leaves ikey a hit and roll which he gets outside the broom and lucks out the double (again). We exchange hits on skip stones to blank the end.

End 6: Having already made 3 double takeouts today, icky is asked to up his level of play in the 6th end. Without hammer, disaster was looming going into icky's first rock with the opposition sitting 3 and all buried behind two guards. Icky's first call was to run an opposition long guard straight back to remove at least one stone in the house as shown.


Success! After Matt fails to tuck one around the shooter that we left up, icky has an even longer raise takeout on his last as shown.


Success again! Our rock remains buried after, leaving Matt a shorter raise takeout using his own stone which he misses. After it looked like we would be giving up 3 or 4, we end up stealing 1 to lead 5-3.

End 7: After getting a rock buried, we play a good end of guards. Matt plays an agressive quiet tap on our rock to move it off the top 4. Icky hits the Shepherd shooter, leaving Matt a cold draw to the 4-foot against 2. He makes it to come home down by 1.

End 8: Iszy's first draw comes deep, but then some over zealous sweepers take iszy's second stone to the tee-line, which is about 6 inches to a foot too deep. Shepherd is able to make successful draws around their guards while we nose hit two peels. icky's final rock was a hit and slight roll to take one facing two Shepherd counters. We barely squeak it by the guard to get the hit, but it rolls too far. Team Shepherd steals 1 to tie the game.

Endnotes: Iszy played really well tonight but that conributed to some of our problems as the opposition was able to draw around our guards and our middle throwers were not as sharp as they were last week. They had us in trouble in 5 of the ends, each of which they were sitting 3 in good spots at one point, but some fluky shots at the right time by ikey, and 3 double-takeouts and two runbacks by icky got us out of danger. We were certainly outplayed today, but hung on tough to get a tie. Icky is missing the last game next week against Elgie. We will probably finish the draw at 5-4-1, which will be right on the Div A/B bubble.