Eve Muirhead and David Murdoch were both left relaying the same message as Scotland left the European Curling Championships with women’s silver and men’s bronze.
Muirhead’s women’s rink, unbeaten in the round-robin stage before defeating Switzerland in the page one-two play-off, lost their first match of the tournament against Sweden in the final.
World champions Scotland were beaten 10-5 by Margaretha Sigfridsson for their second successive European final defeat after Russian Anna Sidorova was victorious over them last year.
And Muirhead, already selected for the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February along with Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Claire Hamilton, was determined to look at the bigger picture.
“That was pretty sore. We just didn’t seem to be as sharp as we had been for the rest of the week and we ended up running the clock down a bit,” said Muirhead.
“But, give them their dues, they played well. When we got our steal in the sixth end to bring it back level I thought we really had a good chance.
“But when you’re running out of time you don’t have as long as you need to make decisions with your last stones and it does make you rush the whole game.
“But we can’t use that as an excuse. We just weren’t good enough and that’s the bottom line. It is not the big one this season, it’s not the be-all and end-all.
“Our preparation is for Sochi. It would have been nice to come away with the gold medal, but we’ve had such a great week.
“I think we’re in a really, really good place and I’m happy with the way things are going. We’ve got a lot of good things to take away from this week but we just couldn’t finish it off.”
And Murdoch echoed Muirhead’s comments after his Scottish men’s rink defeated Denmark 7-6 with two scores in the tenth to leave the European Championships with bronze.
“We know what the real goal is this season, and this week was all about working hard as a team, having some good performances and playing well and I think we’ve done that,” he said.
“We’ve not got a gold medal but we’ve shown what we’re capable of. It’s all about keeping that good form now and training hard and keeping things going.”
© Sportsbeat 2013