Dunstone Eliminates Jacobs, Faces Koe in Brier Curling Final

ST. JOHN’S, NL – Matt Dunstone and Team Manitoba faced Brad Jacobs and Team Canada in Sunday’s Brier semifinal.

It was a rematch of the 2025 Brier final and the first time these skips battled this week.  

Following Brad Gushue’s loss to Jacobs yesterday afternoon, it’s likely many locals have driven home to locations of varied distances – Gander, three hours 25 minutes, Grand Falls-Windsor, four hours 16 minutes, or Corner Brook, six hours and 53 minutes. 

The arena appeared below half capacity and the Sunday night final (6:00 p.m. ET, TSN) could feature the lowest-attended Brier championship final in a very long time. 

Dunstone had to rebound after his loss to the ageless Kevin Koe on Saturday night. Without hammer, Manitoba was able to apply pressure during the extra end and the outcome appeared uncertain… until Koe ran a long guard back and doubled out two Dunstone rocks in the four foot, while leaving the Alberta stone intact and still behind cover. 

It was a shot which required absolute precision and just as fans have witnessed all week, Kevin Koe was up to the task and showed less unbridled emotion than a mortician preparing a cadaver for burial.

Dunstone started the semi with hammer and following a first-end blank, the teams exchange singles until the break. Both Manitoba scores come on pressure draws to the pin by Matt in the second and fourth ends. This kid’s got alligator blood.

The last single was the first miscue from Jacobs, a nose hit on a blank attempt. Dunstone had hammer in a what was now a five end game.

In the sixth end, Dunstone sat second and third in the four foot, with a Canada stone sandwiched on the button. Matt didn’t care for the arrangement and had third Colton Lott fire a runback on his first stone and another on his second, both bullets down the centre line. 

By skip rocks, the four foot was open with yellow Canada stones around the edges, and Matt elected to hit and roll rather than draw on his first. He was decent but settled in the back four foot, and Jacobs calmly dropped his own draw onto the pin and Dunstone was unable to pry it off with soft weight. Steal of one and Canada led 3-2.

Lott made a triple on his last in the seventh end to get Dunstone out of a pickle, but they hadn’t really been able to generate any offence with hammer, until…

There were plenty of guards out front in the eighth end. Canada third Marc Kennedy was unable to remove a buried Manitoba stone, leaving a possible three, but Jacobs was able to make a double on his last and hold Dunstone to a deuce. 

In the next end Dunstone chose a single centre guard rather than two. The runback on E.J. Harnden’s first stone over-curled and the front of the rings was clear. Gallant cleared the trio of rocks at the top of the house and before reaching third stones, the ninth was headed to a blank. 

Manitoba led 4-3, Canada with hammer in the 10th end.

Coming home, Dunstone gained better rock positioning early and Marc Kennedy was a hair wide and heavy on a freeze attempt, leaving Matt a roll under to sit three in the four foot, with two corner-frozen on the button. 

Brad made an incredible double-raise to open up the four foot, sticking a yellow on the side of the four in the process. 

Matt required another hit and roll and made it. 

Brad briefly eyed the same double-raise, for an unlikely triple to win, but elected to draw for one. Ben Hebert and Brett Gallant dragged it hard all the way but Jacobs came up short, and Matt Dunstone returns to the Brier final for the second year in a row, this time to face Alberta’s Kevin Koe for the third time this week.

Koe could become the oldest skip to win a Brier since Albert “Ab” Adam “Spats” Gowanlock from Manitoba in 1953. Ab was born Dec. 14, 1900 and won his first of two Briers in 1938. Fellow Manitoban Jeff Stoughton matched that span of years between 1996 and 2011, adding another title in-between, in 1999. Kevin could do one better by winning 16 years apart.

Koe turned 51 in January and would also be the first skip in his fifties since Gowanlock. Glenn Howard was four months shy of his 50th birthday when he won his fourth and final Tankard in 2012.

To make history, Koe will have to defeat Dunstone for the third time this week.

Dunstone has faced Kevin Koe 29 times, dating back to a 5-4 loss at the Canad Inns Men’s Classic on the World Curling Tour. Matt was just 20 years old and three months shy of winning the Canadian Junior men’s championship for the second time. 

Including their round robin game on Tuesday, Koe is 5-1 against Dunstone since the 2023 Brier.