Perth's Graeme Connal leads team to Scottish Senior Curling Championships title

Graeme Connal and his team of Scottish Senior Curling Championships winners can now prepare for the trip of a lifetime.

The Perth-based skip joined Alistair Scott (Stirling), Mark Fraser (Inverness) and Mark Brass - the latter also from the Fair City - in lifting national gold in Hamilton on Sunday.

That special triumph has rewarded Team Connal with a ticket to the World Senior Championships in Korea in April.

“It is great for us to now get the chance to go to a world event,” said Connal, a world and European champion.

“The competitiveness is still there and I could see it in the team. The four of us got better as the games got bigger.

“If you can be put under pressure and perform like that, it stands us in good stead. It is a fantastic achievement for us all.

“There will be three sections at the worlds and the first target will be to try and qualify out of that.

“If we do that, we’ll take it from there. It is the same mindset as we had for the Scottish Senior Championships. If we’re playing well enough, you never know what can happen.”

The team’s successful week at the nationals reached its conclusion with a 7-4 win in the final against Team Kennedy, following on from a quarter-final victory over Team Prentice and semi-final triumph over Team Cormack.

“We struggled a wee bit with the ice early on,” admitted Connal, who still reflects on the importance of his successful playing days at school with Perth Academy.

“We had a low point in the fourth and fifth games of the round robin where we didn’t play as well as hoped. Fortunately we had managed to win the first three - playing reasonably well - to qualify for the playoffs.

“We qualified in third place and that was possibly a good thing. We got that extra game in the