If the preceding matches cast any doubts over his world class ability they were surely dismissed by the spectacular shot Ewan MacDonald produced to offer a reminder of what he is capable of when claiming victory for his team over the USA in Nova Scotia yesterday.

Following a disastrous start to Scotland's World Curling Championship campaign it was telling that it produced the team's second win on the back of their first against Russia earlier in the day, having suffered five previous defeats.

Such natural brilliance cannot, however, be allowed to distract from the views eloquently expressed by Logan Gray in HeraldSport this week about the urgent need to improve training facilities and competitive structures in Scotland to avoid the risk of missing out on qualifying for future Olympics.

As he and I spoke and he outlined the background of visionary thinking running into conflict with the sport's traditionalists, it all seemed horribly familiar, particularly when he explained the difficulties encountered when it was suggested that the Scottish Curling Tour become part of the qualification process for the Scottish Championships - by extension World Championship qualification - by allowing rinks to accrue points through the season.

"It was opposed by the tour because of slightly conflicting ideas," Gray explained.

"The national championship is ultimately about getting representatives to the World Championships. The Scottish Curling tour was brought together because they wanted to create more recreational participation. So it's the whole participation against competition ideologies.

"They're not particularly interested in bringing in your Dave Murdochs, your Tom Brewsters and all those guys, because they feel that will put off the club curlers, the recreational players and they want lots of entries for their competitions to make them successful and viable and good for the facilities around the country, but they feel the RCCC is hijacking it by bringing this competitive element into their social circle."

As he said so I was instantly drawn back to the 1990s and the hash Scottish rugby made of the transition to the professional game while the Irish, then competitively deeply inferior, embraced the opportunity.

If the Royal Caledonian Curling Club appears to be on the side of progress in that case, there may be cause to question the part it is playing in the creation of the long-mooted National Performance Centre at Stirling however.

The first interview I did with anyone in the sport was with Bruce Crawford, the RCCC's chief executive, ahead of last year's Winter Olympics and even then, as we discussed the NPC proposal, it was by no means new.

Yet, well into another Olympic cycle, the progress report was described b y Gray as follows:

"I'm pretty close to it and I don't know a huge amount about it," he said.

"All I know is that they're still continuing to form a business case and work out exactly what they need."

To put that in perspective "pretty close to it" means he has been based for several years at The Peak in Stirling, where the performance centre would be built; works there as a curling development officer; was previously funded by the GB curling programme as a player; has a younger sister who still is; and has been a television commentator on the sport for the past seven years, travelling the world so gaining exposure to best practice in other curling cultures.

When the creation of a performance centre was first discussed Gray offered to give any input required, but he heads off to a new job in Solihull shortly saying no-one has ever taken him up on that, which seems a colossal oversight given the range and relevance of his experience.

Speaking to a young man who clearly has his sport's best interests at heart and recognises the need to respond to a rapidly changing environment was the latest reminder of the need for a small country like Scotland to be innovative in order to be competitive.

It was something at which we excelled when I first wrote about sport, Jock Stein supported by Alex Ferguson and Jim McLean in preparing national football teams, while Jim Telfer and Ian McGeechan drove our rugby forward.

Individually there have been examples since, such as Judy and Willie Murray seeing the need to send the young Andy to Spain, or when Craig McLean and Chris Hoy headed to Manchester to help spark the British cycling revolution, but I genuinely cannot think of a Scottish team that has benefited from being ahead of the game since McGeechan's first spell as Scotland's head coach in the late eighties and early nineties.

Back then, in the amateur era, his USP was his preparedness to do the equivalent of a full-time job in engaging in endless hours of video analysis, to ensure that technically and strategically Scotland was ahead of the game.

Interesting, too, in that context to speak to Imogen Bankier this week about the prospects of reviving her Commonwealth Games badminton doubles partnership with Kirsty Gilmour, considering that some in the sport have previously told me that should not be considered because none of the world's leading women's singles players also play doubles.

Innovate or die goes the slogan and in small communities the need to do so is heightened, making it all the more important that the environment is right to encourage those who dare to think differently.