World Women's Curling Championship: Scotland 'better prepared', skip Rebecca Morrison says

Rebecca Morrison's rink are currently ranked 17th in the world

Rebecca Morrison believes Scotland are "a lot more prepared than last year" as they begin their World Women's Curling Championship campaign on Saturday.

The Scots face an uphill task after finishing 12th of 13 teams a year ago and being 17th in the world currently.

Four of the top five rinks in the world stand between the Scots and a medal.

"There is a great line-up at these championships and we have faced a lot of these teams on tour this season," skip Morrison said.

"We are a lot more prepared than last year, having played in more games against the top teams in the world

"We have had a mixed bag of results against them, so every team will provide a great game and there is no-one out there who is an easy game. Every country has got a great line-up."

The next two world championships count towards Olympic qualification points, but Morrison says the Scots will be dismissing thoughts of that as they begin the round-robin stage against Marianne Roervik's Norway rink in Nova Scotia.

"It is a really important year," Morrison said. "But we are trying not to focus too much on that because our goals are the same. We just want to finish with the highest result possible, so there is no need to overthink it.

"It is just about getting as many wins out there as you can and, at the end of the week, if we can look back and we have met our goals then we will be delighted and that will come with a lot of Olympic qualifying points as well."

Previous Scotland skip Eve Muirhead had to come through the Olympic qualifying tournament before winning gold in Beijing two years ago and Morrison has Jane Dodds, one of that team, in her rink.

The 16 ahead of the Scots in the world rankings include six Canadians and two each from Korea and United States, but each of those countries can only send one team to Sydney Centre 200 in Cape Breton.

World number one Rachel Homan will start favourite in front of a home crowd, while Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni, who secured the world title for a fourth consecutive year last time out, is ranked second, Korea's Eun ji Gim is third and Anna Hasselborg, Sweden's 2018 Olympic champion, is currently fifth in the world.

"We have gained a lot of experience from previous world championships and can hopefully take that forward this week," Morrison added.

"It is a long week ahead, so it is important to take it game by game and last year's experience will help us through that."