(By Al Cameron)
CHARLOTTETOWN — I’ve been taking heat here this week for suggesting that tomorrow night’s Team Canada-Manitoba game will be the most compelling women’s curling game ever played.
And while I agree with the suggestion that the 1-6 record compiled by Cathy Overton-Clapham’s Manitoba team sucks a bit of the lustre off the game against her former teammates, all I can tell you is that it will be the primary focus of a pile of Scotties coverage that will appear in papers across the country on Wednesday morning.
I stick to my original suggestion that there’s never been a game quite like this one in terms of the back story between the principal players, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out here tomorrow night.
It’s certainly helped the atmosphere here in Charlottetown that Suzanne Birt’s P.E.I. team is on a roll. Since a 1-3 start to the Scotties, Birt and Co. have put together three straight victories to move into a tie for the fourth and final playoff spot with Alberta’s Shannon Kleibrink and Nova Scotia’s Heather Smith-Dacey, whom Birt beat tonight in, by far, the most boring game of the 2011 Scotties — mostly a wide-open game, with a series of numbing hits, that didn’t pick up until the late stages. Birt turned up the heat near the end and Smith-Dacey simply couldn’t respond.
Alberta, meanwhile, continues to grind its way through the Scotties. Having watched the Kleibrink team dominate at the Scotties Alberta championship last month, I can tell you it’s apples and oranges here.
Click for full story in the Calgary Herald.