Brier Bound: Quebec Update

Chicoutimi’s Robert Desjardins and his team of Jean-Sébastien Roy, Steven Munroe and Steeve Villeneuve captured the 2012 Quebec Tankard and the right to represent La Belle Province at the Saskatoon Tim Hortons Brier. Desjardins scored an exciting extra end win over Trois-Rivières-Laviolette’s Phillipe Lemay on Sunday, January 29. Tied at seven apiece after regulation, Desjardins used last rock advantage in the extra frame to manufacture a single and the 8-7 win. Lemay, whose team consisted of Mathieu Beaufort, Jean-Michel Arsenault and Erik Lachance, had beaten Desjardins in Saturday’s 1 vs. 2 Page playoff game by a score of 8-5 in securing a place in the championship final. Desjardins was forced to battle Etchemin’s Jean-Michel Ménard in a fiercely contested semi-final game in order to get another crack at Lemay. Tied at 4-4 after eight ends in that penultimate game, Team Desjardins capitalized on a big score of 3 in the ninth en route to a 7-4 win. Team Ménard, which qualified out of the C Event action along with Glenmore Rosemere’s Steve Gagnon, won the 3 vs. 4 Page playoff game involving those two rinks by a score of 10-7. The 2006 Brier champ was supported by Martin Ridge, Eric Sylvain and Phillipe Ménard, while Gagnon had Martin Roy, Mike Coolidge and Olivier Beaulieu in front of him. Qualifying out of A side action, Lemay’s loss in the final was his first of the competition, which was contested at the Club de Curling Kénogami from January 24-29. This is the first time Robert Desjardins has skipped a team to a Quebec Tankard championship. He played vice on the Francois Gagné team which finished with a 3-8 record at the 2011 Tim Hortons Brier in London, Ontario. He’ll be looking for better things when he and his mates make the trip to Saskatoon for the 2012 Tim Hortons Brier, to be held at the Credit Union Centre from March 3-11.