It’s hardly surprising, given how much time they have spent together over the past decade, that Team Mouat feel like a married couple. Or, more accurately, a married quadruple.
This kind of closeness, admits Bobby Lammie, brings both positives and negatives.
The major up-side, is that Lammie and his teammates have become one of the most successful teams in not only the world of curling but also Scottish sport as a whole.
The down-side, though, is that unless a conscious effort is made to avoid it, they can end up irritating the hell out of each other.
This is, admits Lammie, an inevitable consequence of spending day after day and week after week living, training and competing together.
“There’s definitely both good and bad sides to spending so much time together and being so comfortable together. We know each other very, very well so it really is like being in a relationship – we see each other more than we see family, friends or partners,” the 27-year-old says.
“We know what makes each other tick but we also know what annoys each other.
“Over the years, we’ve realised that we need to have a bit of time for ourselves.
“Looking at other teams, often they split up after this amount of time playing together but we’re all really good friends so that makes everything easier.”
Lammie and his cohorts in Team Mouat have been together for eight years, which is an unusually long time in the curling world.
Their desire to stick together, though, is hardly surprising given the quite remarkable level of success they’ve achieved in their time together.
Lammie, who plays second, alongside skip Bruce Mouat, third Grant Hardie and lead Hammy MacMillan have a bulging trophy cabinet that includes world gold, silver and bronze, Olympic silver, four European titles and a raft of Grand Slam titles.
They’ve begun this season in as good form as they’ve ever shown – they became the first Scots to win the Baden Masters, successfully defended the Euro Super Series title on home ice and have won two Grand Slam titles, including last week's Canadian Open – and Lammie, from Dumfries, admits that given how tricky it can be to pinpoint areas for improvement anymore, he’s encouraged that the quartet are still finding ways to progress.
“We’re very happy with how the past few months have gone but although we’ve had a very good start to the season, I think we all still feel we could be better so it’s nice to feel we can still go up another gear,” he says.
“At the start of the season, we put a big emphasis on the team dynamics because having been together for so long, it can be easy to get too comfortable so we wanted to focus on upping the intensity and making sure we hold each other accountable in everything we do. We’ve done that well so far this season.”
Lammie and his teammates may be content with their start to their season, but he knows the major target of this part of the year has yet to be accomplished.
Team Mouat have their eyes set on another major championship title and today, they will begin their quest for that at the European Curling Championships, which begin in the Lohja's Kisakallio Sports Centre in Finland, where Lammie and his compatriots, who will be joined by alternate Kyle Waddell, are aiming for a fourth consecutive European title, and a fifth overall.
To complete four-in-a-row would, Lammie knows, be no mean feat, particularly given the strength of their competition which includes Olympic and World champions, Sweden.
But given Team Mouat’s status as the world’s top-ranked team and defending champions, Lammie heads into the event quietly confident and entirely unaffected by the pressure that’s upon their shoulders.
“We’re feeling very good - we’re in a strong place and with the start of the season having been so positive, we just need to kick on from that,” he says.
“Being world number one and defending champions is more something we take confidence from rather than feel pressure.
“It’s going to be a tough week, though - if you compare the standard at the Europeans now to when we first won it, it’s night and day – it’s so much stronger now. There’s a handful of teams who could all win the title.”
And Lammie admits that there’s really only one result they’d be entirely happy with come next weekend.
“It’d be great to successfully defend the title again," he says.
"We’re very proud of our record at this event but more than anything, we want to stamp our authority as the number one team in Scotland and we want to earn that spot to the Olympics in 2026. If we can win this European title, that would put us in a good place to hopefully show we’re number one.
“We know if we bring our best as a team, we will get that gold medal. Every tournament we go to now, we’re looking to win gold. We won’t be unhappy with another colour of medal, but we’re going there for gold.”
In the women’s event, Team Morrisson will represent Scotland as they aim to improve on the bronze medal they won in 2022.
