(by Larry Wood).
It was one of the most unlikely finishes in the history of the Tim Hortons Brier’s round-robin preliminaries. Following Thursday night’s final round at the Credit Union Centre, Ontario’s Glenn Howard (10-1) and Manitoba’s Rob Fowler (8-3) qualified for tonight’s Page One-Two playoff (6:30 p.m.) with the winner headed directly to Sunday’s championship final (6 p.m.).
And the Koe brothers, from Alberta (8-3) and the Northwest Territories (7-4), were left to forge a rematch in the Page Three-Four sudden-death playoff Saturday afternoon at 1:30 p.m.
Team Ontario celebrates at the 2012 Tim Hortons Brier. (Photo: CCA/Michael Burns Photography)
Ontario defeated Alberta’s Kevin Koe from Calgary 6-3 Thursday in a long-awaited rematch of the 2010 championship final won by Koe at Halifax. At that time, Koe became the only skip ever to qualify from the Page Three-Four game to progress through semi-final and final with victories.
But the Albertans were chasing in this one, and a respiratory condition plaguing vice-skip Pat Simmons was of no help to the cause.
It was deadlocked at 3-3 playing the ninth when Howard executed a pair of precise runback takeouts which set up a three-spot and the decision. Brandon’s Fowler was catapulted into the Page One-Two tilt while taking a Thursday-night bye, having earlier thumped Saskatchewan 9-3 and Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs 10-4 in morning and afternoon scuffling.
Manitoba defeated Alberta 8-5 on Wednesday night, thereby gaining an edge in the playoff pairings.
Yellowknife’s Jamie Koe, meanwhile, bounced back from an 11-3 thrashing at the hands of his brother’s Albertans Wednesday morning and a 10-5 loss to Manitoba in the afternoon to win twice on Thursday — 9-6 over New Brunswick’s Terry Odishaw and 8-3 over Jim Cotter’s fading troops from British Columbia.
Those decisions were the sixth and seventh of the week for the Polars and left them only the fourth team in the entire field to finish with a record that boasted more wins than losses.
The surviving teams:
No. 1 — Ontario: Glenn Howard, skip, Wayne Middaugh, Brent Laing, Craig Savill of Coldwater.
No. 2 — Manitoba: Rob Fowler, skip, Allan Lyburn, Richard Daneault, Derek Samagalski of Brandon.
No. 3 — Alberta: Kevin Koe, skip, Pat Simmons, Carter Rycroft, Nolan Thiessen of Calgary.
No. 4 — Territories: Jamie Koe, skip, Tom Naugler, Brad Chorostkowski, Robert Borden, of Yellowknife.
New Brunswick (Odishaw), Northern Ontario (Jacobs) and Newfoundland (Brad Gushue) finished 5-6, B.C. (Jim Cotter), Quebec (Robert Desjardins), and Nova Scotia (Jamie Murphy) finished 4-7, and Saskatchewan (Scott Manners) and P.E.I. (Mike Gaudet) were 3-8.