Friends or foes? Rock League sees longtime teammates face off

TORONTO — Thursday was "rivalry night" in Rock League at TMU Mattamy Athletic Centre, with Bruce Mouat vs. Bobby Lammie in the late afternoon match and Rachel Homan vs. Emma Miskew in the evening.

Wait, what? 

The all-new professional league sees curlers playing on franchises rather than with their traditional tour teams, leading to some smashing “grudge matches” with big money and big prizes on the line that you've got to love. Oh, and bragging rights, of course.

The six franchises feature five men’s curlers and five women’s curlers competing in a variety of formats, creating a team within a larger team feel. Round-robin play consists of men’s fours, women’s fours and mixed doubles. A $250,000 purse is also up for grabs during the condensed inaugural season running through to Sunday’. 

Mouat captains the European-based Northern United. Lammie is an import on the Asia/Pacific region’s Typhoon Curling Club and gets to play alongside his girlfriend, Ye-eun Seol. Homan is at the helm of Canadian-based Maple United, while Miskew is with Europe’s Alpine Curling Club.

Mouat and Lammie have won gold medals in juniors and men’s at the world championships along with two Olympic silver medals and a dozen Grand Slam of Curling titles over the past decade together. But on Thursday night, the two squared off with Mouat skipping Northern’s men’s team and Lammie throwing third stones for Typhoon's Niklas Edin.

Mouat stole four points in the second end en route to a 10-4 victory that also helped Northern sweep the match 3-0. The win came a day after Northern was swept at the hands of Alpine Curling Club, with a men’s roster that includes Hammy McMillan Jr., another tour teammate of Mouat’s.

Although Mouat has played against Lammie before in mixed doubles, he said this is a bit different being in a team format. 

“I'd probably rather play with him than against him,” Mouat said. “I enjoy Bobby's energy on the ice and yeah, it's a grudge match. I lost to Hammy yesterday. I didn't want to lose another one to a teammate, so I made sure to beat Bob.”

Lammie also said it felt a little weird given how long they’ve been teammates.

“We play a lot of practice games against each other and stuff, and we're both very competitive people, so we're always going to try and beat each other, but, yeah, a little strange,” Lammie said. “We've been together now for, I don't know, about 11 years or something like that, so being on opposite teams is cool though.

"It's refreshing, and then, I definitely got the competitive juices flowing, but unfortunately it just didn't go our way today.” 

Homan and Miskew have also been pretty much inseparable on the ice since they joined forces back in Bantam. Together they have won the Olympic bronze medal, three world championships and five Scotties Tournament of Hearts titles. They are also the co-holders of the Grand Slam of Curling record for most championships in the series with their 20 wins.

With Homan skipping Maple’s women’s team, Miskew was throwing second stones and handling vice skip duties for Alpine’s Alina Pätz. Maple struggled to generate offence, giving up four consecutive single steals, as Alpine won 6-1 and took the match with a victory in the men’s game as well.

Miskew said the win was bittersweet as she still wanted to see Homan play well.

“That was the first time I guess we played against each other in women's in like well over 20 years, so it was weird,” Miskew said. “I tried to just kind of put blinders on ... and forget that it was her because I didn't want to get distracted, but it was good. My team played really well, so it was fun to play out there.” 

The newly formed rivalries will continue as Lammie is keen to beat Alpine and McMillan when they meet Friday. Mouat will play Frontier Curling Club and yet another tour teammate, third Grant Hardie.

“I'll be up for that one, that's for sure,” Lammie said with a smile. 

He'll have one person cheering for him.

“That would be nice if Bobby beats Hammy because then all three of us (have a win against each other),” Mouat said. “We'll see what happens with Grant as well when we play Frontier.”

... And foes now friends

The 2016 World Junior Curling Championships have been heralded as one of the greatest classes ever with Mouat skipping Scotland to the gold medal, Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller finishing fourth, and Rasmus Wranå also skipping Sweden in the tournament.

Who knew that a decade later all three would be teammates on a pro curling franchise? 

“Yannick and Rasmus and some of the guys that I played against in juniors and now playing with them, it's pretty cool,” Mouat said. “Obviously, I've respected their abilities forever and yeah, it's pretty cool to have that in your arsenal.”

Even as recently as last year in this very building, when Mouat defeated Schwaller in the Players’ Championship men’s final, who would have thought that the next time they stepped onto the ice at TMU Mattamy Athletic Centre that they would be lining up next to each other.

“Well, I've brought it up a couple of times that we beat him a couple of times at the end of last season, and it's been nice to be back here,” said Mouat, who also defeated Schwaller in the 2025 world championship final.

“It's been pretty cool that it's a fun dynamic that we've built in our team already. It's fun people to be around and I'm excited to see where we can go.” 

Northern’s women’s team has also put together Swedish rivals in skip Isabella Wranå and third Sara McManus, who plays on Anna Hasselborg’s team on tour. Their tour teams have clashed 75 times and guess what? They’ve formed a formidable back-end duo. 

“It kind of feels natural because I have played her that much,” McManus said. “I've seen her throw her rocks coming down. It's a lot of fun. We've known each other for years, so it's like a new fun thing and you kind of just want to play to make the shots even more.

"It's a different team and I love all my teammates out there. It's a fun dynamic and we're enjoying ourselves out there.”

Wrana echoed those sentiments and said that it’s been great so far. 

“We share the same native language. That's very good for our back-end discussions,” said Wranå, who recently skipped Sweden to bronze at the World Women’s Curling Championship. “We've also seen each other play a lot, and we’ve played (against) each other a lot. We both are vice or skip on our team, so we're kind of used to seeing each other slide as well. It feels great.” 

Another thing they have in common: They both won Olympic gold medals this year in Milano Cortina. McManus claimed her second in the women’s tournament, while Isabella earned her first in mixed doubles with her brother, Rasmus.