Lyburn has eyes on prize

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This article was published 05/02/2015 (4138 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — One could reasonably expect William Lyburn of Winnipeg’s Granite club to have a welt or two from banging his head against a wall.

The 39-year-old skip has been, in recent years, one of those players seemingly on the verge of something really good, but just can’t seem to get any personnel stability going in order to watch a team morph into something special.

Nothing new there — this is the ever-changing world of curling — but Lyburn, a native of Dumfries, Scotland, sees all of that without regret.

And welts.

The 2014-15 season is another fresh start for Lyburn, who began this week’s Safeway Championship in great form with a 12-3 thrashing of Thompson’s Grant Brown. Lyburn had Brown on the run throughout the opening day’s afternoon draw at Westman Place.

Lyburn has made it to the semifinals twice in the last three years and was selected as the all-star skip in 2012.

All of that respect translated into the players making him the No. 4 seed here this week, despite entering with another brand new team — third Richard Daneault, second Andrew Irving and lead Dan Gagne.

Lyburn’s new support group isn’t without its merits. Daneault has played in two Briers (for Kerry Burtnyk and Rob Fowler) and Irving is the 2007 Manitoba junior champ.

Lyburn arrived at this group after sudden departures late last season. Tyler Forrest retreated from competitive play for family reasons and Alex Forrest and Connor Njegovan jumped to play front end for Jeff Stoughton, whose winning Safeway team from 2014 went their separate ways.

“We knew that Tyler (Forrest) had mentioned after the (provincials) that he was going to be taking a year or two off, having a baby,” Lyburn said after opening with a sharp victory on Wednesday. He’s back on the ice this morning for a Round 2 game against Pinawa’s Richard Muntain. “And at sort of the 11th hour, I guess some things had changed and the boys got a call from Jeff. They’ve grown up through their junior days watching the best player in Manitoba and it’s probably on their wish list to play with Jeff.

“So I don’t hold anything back. Alex and Connor have been with me out of juniors, four years, and they’re both super guys and they’ve got the right head on their shoulders, so I wished them good luck.

“It was a little frustrating because we had talked about it and the team was going to stay (together) and be the team but when you get a phone call like that, anything can happen.”

Amid all of that frustration, adding Daneault was key, Lyburn said.

“Rich Daneault was a guy I wanted to get,” he said. “To be honest, the year before when James (Kirkness) moved on, he wasn’t able to play as much, I was looking at bringing in Rich then to play third.

“So the last few years it’s been one different player, so now it’s a whole new squad.”

Helping him to keep looking forward has been Dr. Gerry Sande, recently retired psychology professor at the University of Manitoba.

“He’s been with me for two years and our whole process is much quicker in getting everybody ready,” Lyburn said.

“This season has been one that we went hard early because we wanted to put ourselves in the Grand Slam events because we wanted the team playing on arena-style ice. But I knew it was kind of practice under fire, that we might take some lumps early, and it didn’t work out.”

Still, the team made a discovery in October in a WCT event in Portage la Prairie, reaching the semifinals.

“That showed us what we were working on was working out quite well,” he said. “And since, then we just focused, because we weren’t going to get points, on making sure we were here, went to Neepawa for a berth and took care of that.”

But happy to be here doesn’t describe Lyburn’s real goal this week.

“Are you kidding me — that’s a funny quote to have,” he grinned. “I can be funny with that, say I’ve got a front row seat to watch Mike (McEwen) and Jeff play in the final. So I can look at it that way, or yes, that I expect to win. My expectations have never really changed but they’re also realistic. We have to play well and we have to play solid percentage games and make the right shots.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

Calvert keeps wins coming D8