Delivery

Sunday morning and it was the leaders, Wales, to be faced. The first half was the quietest set of the weekend and solid play at both tables left us three imps down at the half. Wales, with their eye on the weekend decider in the afternoon, rested Denning and Shields although their replacements, Salisbury and Tedd, proved one of the strongest pairs of the weekend. Again the team played very well and a game swing on the last board gave us a 16 imps win, 17-13 VP.

I thought all the pairs played well in this match and we deserved to win. The final match was against Northern Ireland who were currently in bottom position, so my only job was to keep the team's thoughts on winning the match, not thinking it would be easy and reminding them that it was not the last match but the end of the first half of the Camrose Trophy - they did not really need much reminding though and a couple of late swings left us with a 22 imps lead at the half. In the final stanza of the weekend there was some tiredness shown and we failed to take all the chances offered, but we finished the match winning by 24 imps and a 19-11 win.

Overall we won three matches and lost two, one of which we were winning with five boards to go - a pretty impressive performance from a team with three débutants who are only the second Scotland team. I thought all the pairs played significantly better than I'd seen in the trials and improved as the weekend went on. Experience counts for a lot at this level, a lot more than club and tournament players probably appreciate, and all three pairs will have benefited from this weekend.

Table after the first weekend:

1	ENGLAND	99
2	SCOTLAND	82
3	WALES	78
4	SBU Irving Gordon,William Whyte,Steve Male,Mike McGinley, Sheila Adamson,Anne Symons	71
5	IRELAND	63
6	NORTHERN IRELAND	56

The SBU team