European Curling Championships: Home title defence 'very special' for Bruce Mouat

Bruce Mouat (right) and his team took Olympic silver for Great Britain

Title holder Bruce Mouat says it will be "a very special moment" to finally get the chance to compete on home ice with his Scotland team-mates.

The world champions are targeting their fourth men's European curling title when this year's event gets underway in Aberdeen on Saturday.

But this will be the first time competing together in Scotland.

"We have played as a team for seven years now, so that in itself is a very special moment," Mouat said.

Despite his successes, Mouat admits the coming week will be right up there with anything else they have done.

"It also has meaning to us because we did have the opportunity to do it, but then Covid happened and obviously everything was closed down, so we didn't get to play in Glasgow, which was going to host the world men's," he told BBC Scotland.

"So it kind of feels we have had to wait three years since that to be able to have this opportunity and, now that it has come, it feels very exciting."

Mouat's rink are understandably strong favourites to secure a third successive European crown given they have come out on top every time they have taken part in the event and go into this edition as the reigning world champions and Winter Olympic silver medallists.

However, the skip predicted that "this Europeans is definitely going to be the toughest".

"I feel like there is a very wide variety of teams that can go and podium," Mouat said. "It would mean a lot to be able to win our fourth one, but every single one of them is pretty tough to win, so having family and friends there will obviously will hopefully be like our fifth player and will help us get across the line."

Carrying home hopes in the women's competition are the rink led by 27-year-old Rebecca Morrison, who skipped her team to bronze at last year's event in Sweden and thinks another podium finish is a "realistic" aim.

Bristol-born Morrison's family moved to Aberdeen when she was two years old and she is relishing the chance to shine on the biggest of stages, at the venue where her curling journey began.

"I think a lot of curlers come from a curling background with their family," she said. "For me, it was just a case of they were building the ice rink in about 2005 and I happened to be driving past with my mum and I said to her 'can I try that?', so we just wandered in, I started at the junior classes and from then on it just became something that I have done since then.

"I was not a good player when I was younger. I was tiny, I started when I was eight and the stone weighed more than me, I couldn't get it up the ice for a good season or two, so I understand why I may not have been the type of kid that you saw a future in the sport. I am glad I stuck at it."