Against Ukraine the open team started and finished with swings in the wrong column as they fell to a 9-21 VP defeat. A similar performance against Turkey resulted in a 10-20 VP loss. The scorecard for the final match against Latvia looked like a tired performance, an early game swing negated by losses on almost all the other boards.
Belgium and Germany are the final two matches for the team tomorrow. They will be playing for pride against the Belgians but the Germans may need a good score to qualify, so the team will need be playing motivated opponents. Having played Piekarek and Smirnov in the Vanderbilt, I know that they are a really tough partnership to play against.
A fairly quiet set was punctured with moments of high excitement in the Swedish match, but the women got the best of it with a 19-11 VP win. The England match was like watching the football championships that some people think are the real Euros going on at the moment: a lot of action, brilliant goals, a few own goals too, and when the dust settled the narrowest of wins for the English. Both teams will feel that they had chances: Scotland to win the match and England to win it bigger. In the final match they faced a France team that played very well, particularly in the part-score area. Although I thought both pairs played well, imps drifted away at the end for a 9-21 VP defeat - earned more by the French than lost by the Scots.
After today's test the pressure remains on the women with Spain and Italy tomorrow. Both teams are in the lower half but can be dangerous, especially the Dano de Falco coached Italians.
The senior's first match, against Germany, was a fairly quiet set without the moments of excitement discovered by the women. Readers might like to infer something from this although, to be fair, the seniors only play sixteen boards and two of the women's double-imp swings were in the last four boards. In future championships it seems like all the teams will have the same length matches. Then they did the business by demolishing the Finns for a maximum win. In the final match three game swings, with two of them compressed into one board, at the start of the match was the difference between the teams as they lost 10-20 VP to Norway.
Turkey, Italy and Israel tomorrow may cause dangerously raised blood pressure in the senior camp. Three top teams and the Scots will have to be on their mettle to compete.
