I’ve just got back from Curl Aberdeen where I watched the last few ends of a wonderful game of curling between Hannah Fleming and Hazel Smith. The shot play on truly great ice was spectacular. In the ninth end one up without, Hannah played an eight feet raise to the back four foot to sit on Hazel's shot. Stunning.  A near certain two for Hazel looked like it might be a loss of one because the draw to the tee was tough. Hazel called an angled raise run back six foot out and picked Hannah's stone of the nose of her shot clean as a whistle, and scored her deuce.  An easy call for shot of the night? Not after Hannah's slash double that had saved the previous end.

Needing two with in the last end, Hannah drew her first stone completely behind cover in the top eight foot.  The ice had so much curl that a hack weight could catch most of it. The way Hazel was playing I was looking forwards to the extra end already. There seemed no other choice. But Hazel called a time-out. With 37 seconds left. When the coach arrived, the one minute counter, obscuring the time the team actually had left, came up and started to count down. Unseen the 37 seconds were also ticking away. The buzzer went. The game was “over”.

I don't know what to call the above. It sure didn't look like curling to me. I felt robbed, I am not going to pretend I can imagine what the Smith rink felt.

I've worked with computers all my life, and.......on second thoughts I'll save you the grumpy old man stuff.  A great game of curling usually serves to make me feel great about my sport. I wasn't happy tonight.

Are you sure that is what happened with the clocks. I thought when you press the button for the timeout the main clock stops. Therefore the 37 seconds should still have been there after the minute was up.

Did anyone mention at the time that the buzzer went during the middle of a time out - which should, I think, be impossible.

Guys - The rules on time outs changed a couple of years back.  The clock stops and allows travel time for the coach to reach the ice and then the clock starts to run again.

I was there last night and it appeared to me the problem was the girls just didn't understand the rules on time clocks if they did they had time to play the shot.  I feel for the girls as it's a horrible way to lose and a harsh lesson, but I'm sure they won't make that mistake again.  I could tell by their reaction that they knew they were going to run out of time they just thought the clock running was an error.

I've taken this direct from section C7 of the rule book for clarity and item iii is of particular note:

OTB, Im more confused than I was, my opinion was that of part (iv) but that seems to contradict clause (iii)   Are there 2 types of time out or does it depend on the competition, which rules apply ?
Finally were the girls given their 10 second warning ?

Think of the time out as a one minute coach interaction during game time, as that's actually what it is now. The girls didn't get a 10 second warning as they never hit that stage of the coach interaction as they ran out of time.

I think your confusion comes from the interpretation of the word time out as it doesn't actually stop the clock once the coach reaches the ice.

This seems unnecessarily complicated for those, like Hazel, out with the top flight (and therefore bot benefiting from 'professional' coaching).
Give teams an extra minute for the match and stop coach interactions other than slapping of foreheads and general gesticulations.

Point taken, but 37 minus 60 still leave MINUS 23 seconds, whether it shows on the clock or not! No offense, Hazel, lesson learnt, remember well.

Point of order. Colin Hamilton discussed the incident with me tonight. Although I could not see the "main" clock counting down, it was visible in a smaller font to those on the ice. The "1.00" looked to me to fill the whole screen, in fact it did not.

I remain unconvinced about the mechanisation of the hand shake. I heard a great explanation of what I mean when I was scoring at he European Championships in Aberdeen with Judy, and a player fouled a stone just short of the house which resulted in its being removed. We turned to Gerry to confirm this would be a null score - "No, its a zero, they did it deliberately" Judy and I looked at one another as if Martians had landed. "They do it all the time". He added. That didn't help us any.  We discussed this a little, then Judy said "When I shake hands with the opposition before the start of the game, I'm making a deal that we understand how we are about to play and by what rules."

 Now we have stones that beep, chess clocks, the whole time-out thing is deeply suspect (warning! warning! rant alert!) I play a brilliant shot and as a reward the opposition gets another minute to think about it? Who thought that up... sorry, I'm easily distracted.

I liked the game best when Judy's Rule was the only one we needed. Before this clutter of electronics was required  and the shake of the hand at the start of the game defined it as for eight people.