Gordon is Brier bound

Rob Gordon made a hit in Sault Ste. Marie and will now roll into the Nokia Brier in Saskatoon.

Gordon and his rink of Brian Fawcett, Steve Burnett and Jeramie Landry from the Cobalt-Haileybury Curling Club captured the 2004 Northern Ontario Men's Curling Championship at the Soo Curlers Association on Saturday night with a 6-3 win over Thunder Bay's Jeff Currie.

Gordon will represent Northern Ontario at the national championship March 6-14.

After Currie took a 3-2 lead with two points in the seventh end, Gordon rebounded with a huge three-point effort in the eighth and a steal of one in the ninth before running Currie out of rocks in the 10th end to claim the ticket to the national championship.

Gordon is the fourth to join the field of participants at the Brier which includes New Brunswick's Russ Howard and Southern Ontario's Mike Harris, a former Olympic silver medalist, and British Columbia's Jay Peachey.

Sault Ste. Marie's Al Harnden and his local rink of Eric Harnden, E.J. Harnden and Rob Thomas dropped their page playoff game 4-2 to Currie on Saturday morning. Currie sealed the win after stealing a point in the ninth end to take a 4-2 lead.

Harnden advanced into the playoff round after squeaking through Friday's final round robin games and a tiebreaker. Harnden won two straight games on Friday to finish at 4-4 and in a tie for fourth place. Harnden defeated Sudbury's Chris Johnson 6-5 in the tiebreaker to claim the final playoff spot.

Thunder Bay's Denis Malette dominated the field during the round robin and finished with a perfect 8-0 record. But Malette's good fortunes turned sour on Saturday after dropping the page playoff to Gordon 6-4 and then falling to Currie 7-5 in the afternoon's semi-final.