Roar of the Rings: Jennifer Jones gives up steal of four to Val Sweeting in upset loss

If Val Sweeting served noticed she was to be taken seriously at the Roar of the Rings with her win over Rachel Homan in the first draw, well… what does the win over favoured Jennifer Jones signify?

Don't let the 9-6 scoreline fool you—Sweeting didn't dismantle Jones, but came back after being down 3-0 after two ends and capitalized on three costly mistakes by Jones in the seventh end, and helping her steal four points. To put that in perspective, in the entire 2013 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Jones gave up ten points worth of steals in 14 games played, and did not give up a steal of more than one point until the penultimate end of the gold medal game. But Sweeting, fresh off an 8-6 win earlier in the day against Stephanie Lawton, stole seven off of her in Monday night's evening draw.

So how did the seventh break down?

The end began with some aggressive shots from both skips. Sweeting set up the centre guard with her first stone, but the next four shots came into the rings. Jones' second Jill Officer attempted a runback with some favourable angles but knocked both yellow stones out of the rings. That gave Sweeting a chance to load the rings, and after Jones' second Kaitlyn Lawes second rock picked something and failed to finish, Sweeting's red rocks were sitting second, third and fourth.

Here's how the stones were positioned going into skip stones in the end:

Sweeting tapped her top rock back onto the yellow and positioned her bottom red rock further down into the eight foot, opening up a hole to remove the yellow stone. The plan for Jones was to play a double runback and get some rocks moving in the house, but all she did was take away her top guard, giving Sweeting a clearer path to eliminate the shot stone.

Again, here's how it looked:

The theory… eliminate the yellow rock with a double raise takeout, and you have a chance to sit four. That's exactly what happened. The rocks moved splendidly for Sweeting, forcing Jones with a difficult shot for one.

The plan was to rub off the stone that was halfway on the white eight-foot circle, and knock the shooter onto the shot stone that was catching a piece of the button. Unfortunately for Jones…

…her final shot (shown in motion, being swept by Ferguson in the image above) didn't only miss the top stone by less than a half inch, but in an unforeseeable worst case scenario, also didn't catch on the red stone on the button and went far enough to give a steal of four points. Officer, unable to save the stone with her sweeping, slammed her broom onto the ice. Per the legendary Vic Rauter, was "brought to her knees on the brushing".

With her last in the next end, Sweeting made an excellent freeze onto two yellow stones to sit for shot and forcing Jones to take the single. For the second consecutive end, unfortunately, Jones came up well short as her sweepers couldn't move the hammer stone to catch a piece of the button.

Jones took back two in the ninth end, but shook hands to end the game after the ninth. Sweeting now stands alone as the 3-0 team, which is not only impressive in itself, but her three wins have come against the three top seeds.

She's been fortunate, but again, notice served. Sweeting's young team qualified to the tournament in the pre-trials event and if their performance there didn't help them become known to the casual Canadian curling fan, certainly they're there now.