The whack heard ’round the Brier

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This article was published 04/03/2015 (4087 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY — Let’s get something straight right off the top — this was not Bobby Clarke on Valeri Kharlamov.

No bone was broken, no flesh was torn, no ankles were hobbled.

No, the Northern Ontario broom that was rapped across the ankle of Ontario third Mat Camm in the third end Monday night of the annual Brier Battle of Ontario was not much more than a gentle reminder for a rookie player that the Brier has its rules — written and unwritten — and they will both be enforced, one way or the other.

Camm and the rest of his rookie Ontario foursome at Scotiabank Saddledome this week had been asked twice in two nights by two veteran teams to please stop kneeling on the ice after they threw because it was leaving bald spots on the pebble and affecting play.

Alberta’s Kevin Koe foursome asked the Ontarians to cease and desist during their game Sunday night. And then early Monday night, the defending Olympic gold medalists skipped by Sault Ste. Marie’s Brad Jacobs requested the same thing from the youngsters.

And still Ontario knelt on the ice. And still the puddles formed.

So the Jacobs foursome took justice into their own hands at that point, going old school on the Ontario youngsters at an event where player justice was once the only justice at an event that ran without the input of any officials for most of its long and glorious history.

Moments after Camm released his first rock of the third end, TSN cameras caught the image of a Northern Ontario broom whack the shin of the thrower’s trailing leg. The episode startled Camm, who looked back immediately and — as had been the intent — rose to his feet.

Ontario went on to give up a three that end after Camm missed his next shot and they ultimately lost the game handily, falling 7-3 to Northern Ontario.

The Ontario team filed a protest after the game with Curling Canada but the country’s governing body wanted nothing to do with getting involved and took no action other than to remind both teams on-ice officials are available to resolve disputes.

Which is, of course, mostly false. While it’s true on-ice officials are present at the Brier and can be asked to mediate disputes, it is considered very bad form for a team to actually ask officials to do so.

In a game that drips with tradition and is still referred to as the “Gentleman’s Game” in some quarters, one of curling’s bedrock principles is players are to call their own infractions and the game is to be self-policed.

In the old days, before the era of electronic hog-line detection, what that meant most commonly was the occasional crack across the knuckles with a broom for a thrower who was deemed once too often to have given it six more inches and “crowded the hog line.” Ditto for the curler who once too often left a hand print on the ice or, as in this case, a knee print.

Some curlers were legendary for inflicting frontier justice. Alberta skip — and 1961 and 1974 Brier champion — Hec Gervais, for instance was famous for his low threshold of tolerance for fools on the ice and his willingness to set them straight with a combination of force and intimidation.

Curling Canada events director Warren Hansen, who played second for Gervais, recalled how he used to think every team in Canada played with strict etiquette and religious observance of the rules, only to later discover after he was no longer playing for Gervais that it was all an illusion — it had just seemed that way to Hansen all those years because other teams were scared to death of Gervais and didn’t dare cross him.

While Monday’s Ontario episode set off a small firestorm on social media — with seemingly everyone convinced one team or the other was hopelessly in the wrong — it is illustrative neither team made much of an issue of it Tuesday.

While his team filed a protest immediately following the game, skip Mark Kean said he wasn’t surprised no action was taken and he harboured “no hard feelings” towards Northern Ontario.

For their part, Northern Ontario issued a statement saying the whack on Cann “was harder than intended” and they apologized for it. Both skips said they felt a lesson had been learned.

In the end, the system more or less worked. It might not have been pretty — watching justice in action seldom is. But you got the feeling a young Ontario team with a bright future in front of them got a lesson they will remember about how things work on curling’s biggest stage.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek