New Zealand's run at the world men's curling championship has come to an end after Sweden won a one-sided fourth-place tie-breaker 10-2 overnight in Switzerland.
The squad of Peter de Boer, Sean Becker, Scott Becker, Kenny Thomson, Phil Dowling and coach Peter Becker finished fifth - New Zealand's best-ever result- and collected invaluable 2014 Winter Olympic qualifying points.
Little went right for the Kiwis in their tiebreaker and they were unable to repeat the form that saw them win seven games earlier in the week, including the scalps of all three medallists at the 2010 Winter Olympics - Canada, Norway, and Switzerland.
After the match, New Zealand skip Peter de Boer was philosophical.
"It's never much fun to finish a tournament like that," he said. "But overall we're delighted with where we ended up."
"We came here thinking that if we played to our potential we were good enough to win a few games, and that would mean meeting our goal of gaining Olympic qualification points. We've certainly done that, and we've shown we can foot it with the best in the world.
"We've achieved here on the bare minimum of preparation, simply because we don't have the funding to do any more. Looking ahead, I think we've demonstrated the potential to achieve real results if we have some backing, so we'll certainly be putting the case for that when we get back home."
