A smile was back on David Murdoch’s face as he led Scotland’s men to victory over Russia to kickstart their European Curling Championships assault into life.
After an opening 10-6 loss to Denmark Scotland went back onto the ice in Stavanger in a bid to eradicate that disappointment.
And that is exactly what they did as skip Murdoch and his team recorded a 7-3 win over the Russians.
After blanking the first end Scotland scored two in the second and didn’t look back, scoring twos in both the fourth and sixth ends while their Russian opponents could only score singles when they had last stone.
Scotland then stole a single in the seventh and after Russia could only reply with one in the next end they conceded defeat.
Next up for Scotland’s men is a match against Finland and Murdoch admitted he was looking forward to the rest of the competition after taking some time to adjust to the Norwegian conditions.
“That was much more like it,” Murdoch said. “We performed a lot better, we read the ice a lot better and just did everything right in that game.
“We’re really happy – we said we’d rebound after that bad loss in the morning, but that’s how we’ve been playing for the last couple of months”
“We’re taking it one game at a time, of course, but we certainly want to perform like that against Finland.”
© Sportsbeat 2013