Women’s World Curling Championship: Scots edge Turkey to retain slim play-off hopes

Scotland survived a nail-biting finish to beat Turkey 6-5 and retain slim hopes of reaching the Women’s World Curling Championship play-off stage.

Rebecca Morrison’s rink sit eighth of 13 teams but need to finish in the top six after their final two games.

The Scots next face Japan and then take on a Canadian rink sitting top of the round robin with a 100% record.

Morrison said “we’ll come out firing tomorrow” after putting behind them a five-game losing run in Nova Scotia.

“It was a tough start – five losses in a row was not what we wanted,” the Scotland skip admitted. “But I’m feeling really good and take a lot of confidence into tomorrow.”

Scotland have four wins from their 10 games and need to win both their final games while hoping Sweden and Denmark, who have six wins each, fail to win either of their remaining matches to have a chance of reaching the qualifiers for a place in the semi-finals.

Even then, Japan and the United States also could finish with six wins as the teams chase the fifth and sixth positions that would qualify them for one of the two play-off matches, with the winners of those going forward to the semi-finals.

However, even if Scotland fail to progress to the final stages, every win is vital with this and next year’s world finals counting towards qualification to the next Olympics.

“Even though our fate is kind of out of our hands in terms of our win/loss record and looking to get to play-offs, we’re very aware that every win is valuable this year and that we’ve got to stay up that table as far as possible,” Morrison said.

Indeed, she, Jen Dodds, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson, who are currently ranked 17th in the world, are on course to improve on last year’s 12th-place finish.

Against the Turks, the Scots scored doubles at the second and fifth ends, but Dilsat Yildiz’s rink pulled it back to 5-4 with a double of their own at the eighth.

With Scotland 6-4 up at the final end, Yildiz had a shot for two with her final stone, but the Turkish skip could only pick up one.

Morrison’s rink next face Miyu Ueno’s Japan, who have won three of their nine games so far, on Friday before taking on Rachel Homan’s world number ones in front of their home crowd.

The Canadians, who have won all nine of their matches, have already qualified for the next stage along with Stefania Constantini’s Italians and Silvana Tirinzoni’s Swiss, the reigning champions Scotland defeated 6-5 to end their own poor run.

*Scotland’s round-robin matches on Friday, against Turkey at 12:00 GMT and Canada at 17:00, will be shown live on the BBC Sport website and iPlayer.