Canada conquered again as Scotland reach World final

DAVID Murdoch's Scotland booked their place in Sunday's final of the World Curling Championship with another win over reigning champions Canada.

ON A ROLL: David Murdoch's Scotland have bounced back from defeats against China and the Czech Republic to win their last five matches at the World Curling Championship - reaching Sunday's final (Getty Images)

Canada arrived at these championships unbeaten for 12 months but Murdoch's rink - the runners-up in last year's final - have now done the double over them twice in 24 hours.

Kevin Martin's rink - burdened by the expectations of a partisan home crowd in Moncton - will get another chance to progress when they play the winner of Norway and Switzerland in Saturday's semi-final.

And while he'll be hoping for third time lucky, it appears that Murdoch has got the upper hand on the team to which many had conceded the world title earlier in the week.

"We're delighted - now it's getting exciting," said Murdoch, following his 7-5 win in the one v two play off.

"This is the standard we aspire to play every time we are on the ice and for the last five games we achieved it, which is very satisfying."

Murdoch, the 2006 world champion, will now get a chance to rest on Saturday while Canada - the top qualifiers from the round-robin stage - look to take advantage of their second chance.

But the Scot won't be getting ahead of himself, last year he beat Canada at the same stage but went on to lose when it mattered most in the final.

"Hopefully we get a rematch with those guys on Sunday," he added.  "They're great champions, they're the best team in the world and the ones you really want to beat to become world champions.

"It would just be one of the most amazing things to win the gold-medal game and beat the best team in the world three times in a row, and we're going to be trying hard for that.

"Hopefully it happens."

Martin was fuming after the defeat and left lead Ben Hebert to sum up the frustrations of his team.

"That's the worst game I think we've played as a team since I've been on the team. That was embarrassing," he said.

"We have never have ever played as bad like that as a team.

"It was twenty per cent lower than we normally play. It's hard to stay on top of your game, I guess, all season. But we just didn't play good. Lead through skip, we were just very bad."