Dacey leads curlers into closed door meeting with NS officials

Mark Dacey's call out of the Nova Scotia Curling Association had some results it seems. 

According to Monty Mosher of the Halifax Chronicle Herald, Dacey and a number of other competitive curlers from the province met with officials from the Nova Scotia Curling Association behind closed doors on Saturday to deal with issues the curlers feel are holding them back against other players across the country. 

Dacey said every player in the province will say that playing conditions for provincial competitions must be improved and brought in line with the type of conditions found at the Brier or the Scotties Tournament of Hearts. 

“We want fast ice that curls 4-5 feet that stays that way right until the end of the game,” Dacey, originally from Saskatchewan, said Friday. “We haven’t had that, ever, since I’ve been here.”  

He compared the current situation to having an Olympic sprinter do his training on a dirt road. 

“They would train in the conditions that replicate the Olympics ... because that’s the best chance for success. We aren’t given that opportunity.  

“We train in mud, rocks and dirt,” he said, continuing the Olympic metaphor. “And then we go the national stage with spotlights and ice that curls five feet and with four-second splits and the nerves kick in and you haven’t played on that ice. You can’t excel.”

Of course under the new relegation system at the Brier, Nova Scotia missed the main competition for the first time in the event's history.

Jamie Murphy, who has won the Nova Scotia title two of the last four years, served on the ice committee and said the conditions have simply been inadequate.

Murphy, who came to Nova Scotia from New Brunswick, said he served on Nova Scotia committee to set ice conditions for provincial play and those conditions haven’t been met in the past four years. 

“They haven’t even been close,” he said. “The ice conditions in all of the qualifiers and all of the Tankards have been inadequate. 

“I can say that — and it shouldn’t sound like sour grapes — because I’ve won a couple of them. I would say in the two I won the conditions were completely inadequate.”