Jones sees no need to read all about it

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This article was published 23/02/2011 (5640 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHARLOTTETOWN — Newspaper telemarketers need not bother trying to sign up Jennifer Jones for a subscription anytime soon.

“I haven’t read media probably for five years,” Jones, the Team Canada skip, said here Tuesday at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts. “Not that you’re not brilliant writers, I just don’t read any of it.

“I’m here. I don’t need to read any of it, I know what’s going on. It’s not why I play. I play because I love the game, I love the smell of the ice, I love being out there. It’s not for the notoriety or anything that goes along with it. It’s really, purely, simply for the love of the game.

“I haven’t read one article about anything. I didn’t even read a paper when we won the Canadians or the worlds or anything. It’s just not something I do.”

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In a questionnaire in the in-house newspaper yesterday, Cathy Overton-Clapham listed her favourite movie as The Blindside and her pet peeves as ‘People who lie, disloyalty.’

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Jones is a lawyer by trade and tends to choose her words carefully and speak diplomatically.

Which is why it was a bit striking here Tuesday to discover it took a subject as mundane as curling timeouts to get a little bluntness out of Jones.

“I really don’t like the rule. I think it’s silly. I don’t understand it,” Jones said.

So what is it that has finally drawn some public ire from Jones? A new rule at Canadian Curling Association events this winter that has eliminated the two one-minute timeouts teams used to enjoy.

Teams can still summon coaches to the ice twice during a game, but that time counts against their clock. The new rule was put in place in a bid by the CCA to speed up the games.

The result has been a dramatically diminished on-ice role for curling coaches.

“It is what it is and we do find you have to play faster,” Jones said. “You just don’t call the timeout (to summon a coach) unless you have lots of time, which really defeats the whole purpose of having them.”

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Ontario’s Rachel Homan had been making women’s championship curling look easy here. Until Tuesday.

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Taking advantage of an unusually soft early schedule, the 21-year-old Homan had built up an inflated 5-0 record heading into Tuesday when she ran smack into a dose of reality in the form of Saskatchewan’s Amber Holland.

Holland punched a three-ender in the third end and then stole two more in the fourth end to jump out to a 5-1 lead en route to an 8-5 win over the young Ontario foursome.

Homan, who has been a bit cocky with reporters after her games, showed no signs of dialling down the confidence following the loss to Holland.

“We just didn’t have our A-game,” said Homan. “We’re (6-1) and that’s a really good spot to be in. I’d have been pretty happy if you’d told me that coming into the week.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca