Mouat's Men win Perth Masters again

World Champions Team Mouat were pushed to the limit, but applied just enough pressure when it mattered most to allow them to hang onto their Mercure Perth Masters title at the end of an epic final with their closest Scottish rivals. Opposing skip Ross Whyte and his teammates Robin Brydone, Duncan MacFadzean and Euan Kyle had been given a boost ahead of the event when the New Year adjustments to the world rankings had moved them to fourth position, the highest placed Scottish side and they lived up to that status as they reached the final unbeaten. Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan had meanwhile lost their final pool match to Team Brunner, but they had reversed that result with a 6-2 win against the Swiss quartet in the semi-finals after squeezing past Norway's Team Hostmaelingen 7-6 in the quarter-finals to earn their place in the final against Whyte's men, who had won another all-Scottish encounter in their semi-final with Team Waddell. The quality of play in the final meant that neither side was able to claim a significant advantage until a perfectly judged angled raise by Whyte nudged a second stone onto the button to edge into the lead for the first time at 3-2 at the sixth of the eight ends. Mouat then opted to blank the seventh end where it was his turn, under maximum pressure, to produce an angled raise, this time for a takeout that looked as if it might have won the match, only for the measure to rule in Whyte's favour, which meant he had scored just one, bringing about an extra end. It was another tense affair as both teams patiently awaited their opportunity and Whyte looked as if he might have done enough when he blocked off the most obvious chance for Mouat to produced another raised takeout. That led to a lengthy discussion with his team, but Mouat somehow worked out the angles to see an opportunity to raise an opposing stone onto one of his own, which then took Whyte's shot stone off the button. Whyte then looked to have responded with a brilliant attempt at a raised takeout of his own, but he was unable to move Mouat's counter quite far enough. "It wasn't plain sailing but we did enough to win the event and had a really good day today," said Mouat, whose men maintained a run of success that has seen them win every Perth Masters since 2018. "We played really well in the last three games. In all of them we played to a pretty high standard and that is what you need to do on a play-off day and I was glad to get that one over the line. "We played some really nice shots there to put Ross and the boys under pressure and we got the result in the end. "It's always exciting to win. It's what we play for and what we train for and Perth has so much history behind it and we used to come and watch this event when we were a lot younger and we watched all the big Canadian teams come over to compete in this event so it is always a pleasure to play at Perth and they have run the event really well."