Registered: Dec 2003
Location: Ontario
Posts: 40

Have any clubs adopted the Curl Canada or OCA broom moratorium for their club leagues and bonspiels?

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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990

nope...but our club put a moratorium on shoes with sliders and sliding during the delivery of rocks. It appears that sliding provides excessive wear on the pebble and effects play, especially in the area of the houses in the later stages of the game. Just kidding but you see how stupid this whole "Broom Moratorium"is.

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Registered: Aug 2014
Location:
Posts: 106

quote:

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Originally posted by fresca
the new sliders could easily be damaging the ice
6 discs with sharp edges

200 lbs concentrated on 1/2 an inch

bet i could shave pebble with them

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Registered: Dec 2003
Location: Ontario
Posts: 40

Our club has stated they will be following the broom moratorium starting Jan 1 for all leagues and bonspiels. One of their reasons was that other clubs are doing it now too, but I have yet to hear of other clubs to implement the broom moratorium for their leagues and bonspiels.

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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990

quote:

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Originally posted by Skinz
Our club has stated they will be following the broom moratorium starting Jan 1 for all leagues and bonspiels. One of their reasons was that other clubs are doing it now too, but I have yet to hear of other clubs to implement the broom moratorium for their leagues and bonspiels.

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Registered: May 2014
Location:
Posts: 143

our club banned sliders with directional teflon and rigid inserts of all types. i'm told that i'm rigid enough w/o any inserts.

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Registered: Dec 2013
Location: Halifax
Posts: 59

Our club has not imposed the moratorium at the league level, and probably won't, but I am getting enough static over my Hardline broom that I'll probably closet it for awhile and go back to my Goldline. It's annoying to go play a recreational curling game and get (mildly) hassled about my broom.

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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990

quote:

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Originally posted by jzwanzig
Our club has not imposed the moratorium at the league level, and probably won't, but I am getting enough static over my Hardline broom that I'll probably closet it for awhile and go back to my Goldline. It's annoying to go play a recreational curling game and get (mildly) hassled about my broom.

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Registered: Mar 2011
Location:
Posts: 15

Just pass them the broom to your opponent that is flapping their gums and tell them they can play with it this game and you will be happy to watch them do crazy things with the rocks. They can't so it will be a pointless exercise...Scratch that. You may actually prove your point but letting them try unsuccessfully to make rocks fall out of the building. The only way you make rocks go backwards is by sweeping over top of the rock in a snow plough fashion on the corner of the stone where you want it to be directed to. If you sweep normally at 45 degrees across the face with any broom out there you will not make a rock fall. In reality with the snow plough fashion you can take a hair broom from 20 years ago and make rocks do unnatural things and if you watch closely that is exactly what the elite teams are doing (including most of the non-Hardline teams). The WCF and the CCA have bigger responsibility to fix the sweeping technique than they did or do to address types of fabric or inserts into brooms.

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Registered: Jan 2015
Location:
Posts: 18

Moritorium by the pros or events leading to WCF events not recreational curlers. I don't see any evidence by our club curlers of "joy sticking" rocks because everyone sweeps according to the rules!

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Registered: May 2014
Location: Joliet, IL
Posts: 629

It's times like these I'm glad I play on hockey ice, where the stones do crazy things regardless of sweeping.

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Registered: Apr 2014
Location: In the House
Posts: 608

quote:

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Originally posted by swjones
The WCF and the CCA have bigger responsibility to fix the sweeping technique than they did or do to address types of fabric or inserts into brooms.

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__________________
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own... but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Registered: Sep 2011
Location:
Posts: 1064

quote:

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Originally posted by On The Nose

^ ^ ^ ^ Absolutely!
The rules making snowplowing and corner sweeping illegal were already there - but they removed those rules 3 or 4 years ago, seemingly because they did not want to make the effort to enforce them.
And that is what has created the idiotic mess we have today.

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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990

How do you propose to enforce the sweeping rules?

You announce before the competition that sweeping rules will be enforced, you tell everyone that this is your first warning and if a team sees another team cheating that they are to summon the umpire who will then watch that sheet ans if they see an infraction will enforce the rules to the letter of the law.Also point out that the umpire had a really bad night the night before and is in an extremely foul mood. After the umpire pulls the first rock the problem will go away for that draw.

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Registered: May 2014
Location:
Posts: 143

a sensible sweeping rule could be enforced. The rule could be something like this:

a sweeper's body must not enter into the imaginary rectangle that extends in front of and behind a running stone, and a sweeper's broom must not enter into the imaginary cylinder that extends upward from the swept stone. Any violation that lasts more than one second is punished the same as if the sweeper had touched the stone.

Such a rule would be enforced by the sweepers themselves, by their opponents, by officials (if available) and with the aid of video (if available).

This would eliminate snow-ploughing which seems to be the real issue. Eliminating Hardline brushes won't help anything other than to buoy flagging sales of other companies' equipment. Without some kind of limit the snow-ploughing edge-scratchers will continue to make a joke of the sport with whatever equipment is available.

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

quote:

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Originally posted by rbi
a sensible sweeping rule could be enforced. The rule could be something like this:

a sweeper's body must not enter into the imaginary rectangle that extends in front of and behind a running stone, and a sweeper's broom must not enter into the imaginary cylinder that extends upward from the swept stone. Any violation that lasts more than one second is punished the same as if the sweeper had touched the stone.

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Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 4002

Why are we going to the next level in rules in outlawing sweeping?

After watching the Canada Cup and Canadian Open these last two weeks, there seems to be little discourse between the players over the current sweeping situation.

The players seem happy with where the allowable influence that sweeping has on shots now. I don't see why the game needs to become even more restrictive.

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Registered: Apr 2014
Location: In the House
Posts: 608

quote:

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Originally posted by Gerry
Why are we going to the next level in rules in outlawing sweeping?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gerry
After watching the Canada Cup and Canadian Open these last two weeks, there seems to be little discourse between the players over the current sweeping situation.

The players seem happy with where the allowable influence that sweeping has on shots now. I don't see why the game needs to become even more restrictive.

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__________________
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own... but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Registered: Apr 2014
Location: In the House
Posts: 608

I wrote this in the 'Mike McEwen' thread, in response to someone. Several posters wrote that it is a very accurate summary of the brush pad 'saga'. One poster suggested that it be posted in every thread about the brush pad controversy. While that would be rather ostentatious, I will post it here in this thread, as it seems relevant...

As I understand it, the �agreement� which was signed by the 20 or so teams essentially stated that, until they find out exactly what�s going on with the sweeping, the Hardline players will turn their brush head material inside-out. From what I understand, there was no admission from the Hardline teams that their brooms provided them with an unfair advantage. After all, these were/are the same brooms that some teams were playing with for at least 2 previous seasons, seemingly without issue. It�s difficult to believe that they would suddenly provide an unfair or significant advantage when in the previous 2 seasons there were no such accusations or evidence.

Further, the Hardline teams were in a very delicate position with regards to the �agreement�� it was a public affair, and so if they don�t sign the �agreement�, which called for the protection of the �integrity of curling�, they could be seen as not caring about the integrity of the game, and also as seeking to maintain the �unfair advantage� that others (mainly teams using Balance Plus and Goldline brooms) were accusing them of - yet which has never been proven as fact, even to this day.

Further, this �agreement� came out mainly as a reaction to the extremes of the Balance Plus �Blackhead� brush pad. Hardline�s IcePad somehow got lumped in with the Blackhead pad, even though they are two very different products (in my opinion the IcePad got lumped in with the Blackhead because the goal of Balance Plus was to target the Hardline IcePad all along, Hardline being the newest player in the market, and the one who was most rapidly taking sales away from Balance Plus and the other brush head and broom manufacturers, as Hardline was rapidly gaining in popularity both at the elite and club levels, and thus was a significant threat to Balance Plus and the other broom manufacturers). Since the infamous �agreement� was signed, some non-Hardline teams have been running what is essentially a smear campaign against Hardline - most notably Glenn Howard�s team, which has very, very close ties with Balance Plus.

Further still, the argument/accusation at the heart of this infamous and ill-advised �agreement� was that certain brush heads used �directional fabric�, which it was claimed created a significant advantage over the more traditional - yet still synthetic - brush head materials which have been used over the past 20 years or so. This supposedly �directional fabric� was claimed to be able to direct the rock more precisely than the brush heads made with the older synthetic materials. The �agreement� omitted the naming of any manufacturer, perhaps for fear of a potential lawsuit.
There was absolutely no mention made of any type of insert in that �agreement� - in fact, the word �insert� does not even appear in the officially released 'agreement' written by Nolan Thiessen. Yet today, the WCF and Curling Canada are taking aim more at the IcePad�s plastic insert than they are at the supposed �directional fabric� of said brush head. We�re not really hearing much, if any, reference to �directional fabric� anymore. This suggests that their goal is to render the IcePad illegal in its original form, and to accomplish this by any means possible. This, even though the IcePad in its original form was used on the elite circuit for two years previous, perfectly legally, and seemingly without issue.

Is it feasible - or even possible - that a given brush pad, which remained in its original form, without any alterations, could suddenly begin to have a significantly greater effect on the path of rocks than it had had over the course of the two previous curling seasons? I suppose it�s possible - but only if something else within the element of sweeping, or something within the condition of the ice overall, had changed. Nothing in the ice seems to have changed from the past two seasons to this season - no icemaker that I�m aware of has come up with a new theory of making ice, or a new ingredient to implement into its making� so the ice is the same. The element which HAS changed - and rather drastically - from the past two seasons to this season, is, of course, the sweeping technique. Teams are using one sweeper per rock thrown now, instead of two sweepers, as was the case last season and essentially every year prior to this season. And this one sweeper is �snowplowing� (sweeping north/south, rather than east/west) and �corner sweeping� much, much more often than we�ve seen in the past several years. The sweeping rules were changed 3 or 4 years ago to where �snowplowing� and �corner sweeping� are now permitted, whereas these techniques were not permitted under the previous set of sweeping rules.

And so it seems incredibly obvious, to the astute observer as well as to the casual, that it is the new sweeping techniques which are resulting in the significantly greater effect to the rock�s path than in years past - because the sweeping technique is the only element which has changed. Nothing else has changed. Indeed, we are now seeing sweepers from all teams, using different brands of brush heads - including hair brush heads, which are being used far more often this year with the new sweeping techniques than they�ve been used in the past several seasons -, altering the rocks significantly more than in previous years. This is further evidence that it is the new sweeping techniques which have had by far the most significant effect on the path of the rocks, and not any insert or fabric of any brush head.

And now, we have the WCF and Curling Canada both implementing sudden, mid-season rule changes to brush heads which impact and restrict the Hardline IcePad far more than they impact and restrict any other brush head. Both the WCF and Curling Canada are sponsored by Balance Plus, which is the company which essentially initiated all of this brush head nonsense, and did so from several directions (the �Blackhead�, the smear campaign against Hardline led by Glenn Howard�s team, etc.).

Given all of this, I don�t believe that the words �dishonesty�, �manipulation�, �conflict of interest�, and �corruption� are at all misplaced.

__________________
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own... but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Registered: Jan 2006
Location: Peterborough
Posts: 1120

Just copied this link from twitter. Is this old news or just news. Thought I'd let y'all read it over.

http://www.curling.ca/brush-head-moratorium/

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Registered: Mar 2008
Location: guelph
Posts: 21

Relax everyone! It's not us....it's them! According to Nolan Theissen's latest blog, this is an "elite issue" None of the tens of thousands of us have neither the strength or biomechanics to accomplish a "fraction" of what they can do with this modern technology. Clearly the elite 20 are so advanced that one sweeper can actually slide his or her biomechanical ass all the way down the sheet beside the rock without even sweeping!

We need to focus on the important things, like paying our curling dues every year, so the CCA can fund trips to Kariuzawa and Las Vegas, and thus allow our elites to showcase the skills we mere mortals could only dream of attaining.

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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990

quote:

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Originally posted by Gerry
Why are we going to the next level in rules in outlawing sweeping?

After watching the Canada Cup and Canadian Open these last two weeks, there seems to be little discourse between the players over the current sweeping situation.

The players seem happy with where the allowable influence that sweeping has on shots now. I don't see why the game needs to become even more restrictive.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Toronto
Posts: 2668

quote:

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Originally posted by mcderm
Relax everyone! It's not us....it's them! According to Nolan Theissen's latest blog, this is an "elite issue" None of the tens of thousands of us have neither the strength or biomechanics to accomplish a "fraction" of what they can do with this modern technology. Clearly the elite 20 are so advanced that one sweeper can actually slide his or her biomechanical ass all the way down the sheet beside the rock without even sweeping!

We need to focus on the important things, like paying our curling dues every year, so the CCA can fund trips to Kariuzawa and Las Vegas, and thus allow our elites to showcase the skills we mere mortals could only dream of attaining.

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Well Behaved Women Don't Make History.

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Registered: Feb 2015
Location:
Posts: 98

The skill is suppose to be throwing the rock with proper weight and line---not sliding behind the rock and angle sweeping. The discovery and eventual perfecting of the new sweeping technique has compromised the game to the point where throwing mistakes are now rescued. That cannot be good. Imagine a golfer being able to manipulate a poor putt to go in the cup--it would be banned in a heart-beat.

It's real simple folks---ban all heads that are shown to 1)break down/damage the ice (referring to hard plastic inserts or foil) and 2)fabric that breaks down or damages the ice.

That, along with going back to previous rules for sweeping rocks would deal with the present issue that is destroying the credibility of the sport. How we got here or how Hardline was abused is another matter entirely.

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Registered: Nov 2003
Location:
Posts: 29

quote:

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Originally posted by mcderm
Relax everyone! It's not us....it's them! According to Nolan Theissen's latest blog, this is an "elite issue" None of the tens of thousands of us have neither the strength or biomechanics to accomplish a "fraction" of what they can do with this modern technology. Clearly the elite 20 are so advanced that one sweeper can actually slide his or her biomechanical ass all the way down the sheet beside the rock without even sweeping!

We need to focus on the important things, like paying our curling dues every year, so the CCA can fund trips to Kariuzawa and Las Vegas, and thus allow our elites to showcase the skills we mere mortals could only dream of attaining.

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