It wasn't easy as the Joel Jordison rink took the long way to clinch a spot in the 2014 SaskTel Men's Tankard over the weekend.

They won 6-4 over William Coutts in the C event final at the SaskTel Men's Southern Championship on Sunday and will be heading to the provincial championship again after missing out on the event in heartbreaking fashion last year.

“We're happy whatever way we had to take to get through the qualification process,” said Jordison, who hails from Moose Jaw, but was curling out of the Regina Highland Curling Club on the weekend.  “We aren't going to complain with how it turned out after losing the A, B and C finals last year, we were more than happy pulling out the C final victory this year.”

It was an up and down event for the rink as they put together back-to-back wins to open Southerns, but then lost in the A semifinal, 7-5 to Max Kirkpatrick, and then after advancing to the B final, lost 10-1 to Randy Bryden.  Down to his last game, Jordison put together an easy 6-4 win over Coutts in the C final to advance.

“We came out playing quite well, then in the middle of the weekend we just weren't quite as sharp, but we still managed to pull it back together and pull out a couple of wins,” said Jordison.  “You can't play great the whole weekend, so I was pretty happy with the guys efforts.”

The Jordison rink – third Jason Ackerman, second Brent Goeres and lead Curtis Horwath – have been trying to find their groove throughout the season, but Jordison feels they're where they want to be heading into the Tankard.

“I think we're feeling pretty good,” he said.  “This last month of this season, we've kind of turned the corner as a team and have been starting to put together a good string of games, which we were struggling to do early in the season.

“Everyone is playing well and we have a pretty good idea of what we're capable of.”

The SaskTel Men's Tankard starts on next Wednesday, January 29th, in Shaunavon.