It was show time at the 100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games –> Semi-final day.
Semi-final 1 had Australia versus Korea on sheet B which is the televised game on SkyTV.
In the first end Korea had the hammer and their Skip made a very tough and delicate hack weight angle triple raise takeout of our rock on the button for a score of 3 points. Not a great start indeed especially for playing as well as we did in that first end. We would need to dig deep to get back in the game because the Korean’s are a team that likes to throw them hard and are extremely good at playing a clean game where. Getting rocks in play to score multiple points would be difficult.
We blanked the second end with the hammer, and took 1 in the 3rd. We kept the pressure on them in the 4th and 5th ends and ended up with single stolen points in those ends as well. Fantastic result to be tied at 3 at the 5th end break. It’s like starting the game over, but we had all the momentum at that point.
Korea took a textbook 2 points in the 6th end, and we returned with 2 in the 7th. Tie game, again.
The 8th end is a pivotal end to score points in, leaving two ends to go. We had fantastic rock position in the four foot against the Koreans thanks to a lovely tap back by Hugh, and left me two simple guards to steal another 2 points for us. We stole another point in the 9th end giving us a 3 point lead heading into the 10th and final end.
With one corner guard in play, the Koreans had 2 rocks half buried around it on my last shot. If I made the tricky take-out on them, we’d win the game. If I missed, they would have a free draw for 3 points and a tie. I comfortably threw the last rock, it was never in doubt the whole way and chipped them out for the win.
The entire team played fantastic, and showed a lot of character to get the win. Talking with Lorne De Pape, the game statistician, we all threw above 90% accuracy which is about as good as it gets.
There was also a bit of controversy in the game with the Korean Skip and Third repeatedly moving behind the sheet as we were throwing our shots. For some reason this is a habit that the Korean Men’s team has had since I first started playing with the Aussies in 2000. The umpires had to get involved several times and remind them of the etiquette and rules of the game. Some of this is covered in the following news article http://snow.co.nz/news/2009/8/333-curling-finals-shaping-be-huge-100-pure-new-zealan
This puts us directly into the Gold Medal game against China the winner of the other semi final.
Cheers
<Ian Palangio>