It was nice to see my brothers have a run to the semi-finals of the Perth Masters last week.
Considering they haven’t played at that sort of level for years, it was a great achievement.
There was certainly no shame in losing to the eventual winners, Team Mouat, in the last four.
Bruce’s rink are the form team in the world just now and the most serious it gets for Glen and Thomas these days is the Perth Super League.
Talking of which, I was tempted back onto the ice at the Dewars Centre this week.
Dad wasn’t able to play so I got the call for a match the other night.
I played lead – so all that sweeping was a bit of a culture shock.
And I think my overall game would be best described as ‘rusty’!
But we got the win in the end and I really enjoyed being back on the ice.
The way I see it, curling would die if there weren’t enough people to support the grassroots game.
There’s no way I’d have been the player I was without the experiences I had coming through the four divisions of the Super League and competing in club games.
And I love the fact that you see all the Perthshire curling families like the Smiths, the Hays and the Muirheads playing with and against each other.
Trust me, it’s still very competitive.
It’s an environment I’m so comfortable in – the people there have known me for years so don’t treat me any differently to how they would before I was an Olympic champion.
Don’t expect it to lead to a proper comeback, though……once every so often when they’re really, really stuck is more than enough!
Seeing Beth Mead and her partner, Vivianne Miedema, both on crutches at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards a few weeks ago was a real shame.
Beth has added her voice to the calls for greater research into ACL injuries for women footballers.
With the profile she’s got on the back of the Lionesses winning the European Championships in the summer and coming top in the SPOTY viewers’ poll, she’ll be an important voice in the months and years ahead.
Because, with female elite footballers six times more likely to rupture their ACL than men, it’s crystal clear that more research needs to go into the issue.
STRONGER TOGETHER! ❤️🩹
So I was given sympathy for 3 weeks and now she has to go get some of her own 😂🤦🏼♀️ but we got this, YOU got this.
2 new signings incoming @viviannemiedema 😉 ❤️ pic.twitter.com/y5PbzBiPpM
— Beth Mead (@bmeado9) December 19, 2022
It’s a reminder of how early in its journey professional women’s football is.
All athletes will work hard on injury prevention – whether that’s in the gym or just making sure you do proper warm-ups (which I was never the best at until after my hip surgery!)
But, in the case of ACLs and female footballers, until there’s definitive medical conclusions about what makes women more susceptible to this particular injury, there’s only a limited amount that you can do to mitigate the risk.
There are so many debates about equality between men’s and women’s sport – football, in particular – but this feels like one of the most important and least controversial ones.
It’s a totally reasonable expectation for those six times more likely numbers to get far closer to a level playing field in the next few years.
