Scottish Qualifiers and Dave's waxing.

We qualified for the Co-operative Funeralcare Scottish Men’s Finals that will be held in Dewars Centre, Perth 11-17 February 2013.

It was a reasonably stress free qualification and the results were as follows.

Win 8-2 Manuel

Win 12-7 McCleary
Win 8-3 Gillies
Win 7-4 Cannell
Lose 5-8 Muirhead
Win 7-5 Hamilton

We didn’t have to play the last two games against Graeme Black and Graeme Prentice as we had already qualified. Quite a turn around from previous years where we were still scrambling around for wins late on Sunday evening.

We had a lot of time between games so were thankful to be staying at the Wyllie’s cottage in the Crook of Devon where we could kill some time and keep ourselves amused. We found Kerplunk.



Colin focusing.

We also had grand plans of getting Dave’s 5 year old X-box working so we could get some in-team competition going. We failed miserably to get it to work despite Colin and John’s best efforts.

The draw for the Men’s Finals is now out and can be found here. We open our campaign against Team Neil Joss which contains celebrity comedian lookalike and brother in law to David Edwards, Struan Wood. So it will be a grudge match.

In other news…..

If your name is Louise Edwards (or Colin Campbell) you will know that David Edwards takes a lot of pride in his body and takes “manscaping” his nether regions very seriously. Over the last couple of seasons, it has become a bit of a tradition for Dave to book himself in for a Back, Sack and Crack wax before any tournament we compete in. This is a bit of a treat for Colin as it avoids any unnecessary chaffing when the two room-mates are wrestling/cuddling up to one another on the long, cold winter nights. Unfortunately, Dave has been a bit busy at work and forgot to book himself in for an appointment at his usual salon with his absolute fave beautician, Miguel. The only slot Miguel had open this week was 12.30pm on Friday. Any Team Edwards superfans will know that this clashes with our opening game of the Petrofac Aberdeen City Open. Scott and John asked Dave if it was possible to reschedule the appointment until Monday so that we could play with our full squad for the entirety of the final Scottish Curling Tour event. This was quickly stopped when Colin stepped in and threatened that he would not be playing for the rest of the season if Dave was to miss the waxing. This has left us in the position of looking for a player for the first game of the tournament.

Dave loves a good waxing              

Sooooooooooo

Are you a curler?

Are you in Aberdeen on Friday?

Are you available at 12.30pm?

Can you sweep?

Are a capable of guiding John and Scott from making any blundering tactical errors?

Will you eat a tablespoon of Cinnamon as an initiation?

If you answered yes to all/any of these questions and you would like the opportunity to play with Team Penny/Macleod/Campbell on Friday afternoon, give us a shout and we will see what we can do!

All the previous conditions will be void if you are a very good looking female.

Cheers

Team Edwards

Perth Masters 2013

Our first competition of 2013 was the Mercure Perth Masters. This was our first time on ice since before the festive break.

Scott caught word for a chance of a pre-tournament practice for the team to blast of any rust and perhaps catch out any rogue stones. After sending a few texts to the team to try and generate some enthusiasm for the ice time, he was getting rejected left, right and centre. John and Colin come up with standard excuses, but Dave’s reply hurt the most.

“I can’t. I have an adult job”. Dick.

The Dick in action.

First up was Steve Laycock from Saskatchewan, Canada. They have had quite a good season so far making a semi-final of a Slam and are ranked 15th in the world. In this game they were no match for the Forfar Open quarter-finalists as we ran out 5-2 winners.

Following this was the Calcutta. For anyone who does not know, this is where the teams are auctioned and the purchaser of said team has a chance to win a portion of the prize pool if the team makes it deep into the tournament. This year we sold for £130 to some women curlers.

Calcutta Team photo.

Being the finely tuned athletes we are, we loaded ourselves up on as many free portions of curry and stovies as we could at the ice rink before heading back to the hotel where we consumed some beer.

Winning our first game allowed us to have a long lie where we would face newly crowned European champion, Niklas Edin from Sweden. It was a good game and in the 5th end Niklas had a draw against 5 to tie up the game. He missed, broke his brush, got shouted at by an umpire, and we stole a 5.

Scott and Colin saving another inturn.

Next was Liu Rui, the Pacific champion from China. They did not play very well and we won 7-2. This led to the A final and our first chance to qualify for the KO stages. In the most ridiculous line up of teams we have ever played in a tournament, we were now up against European Silver medallist, Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud. He drew the pin in the 8th end for the victory.

Now this is getting ridiculous. We were on against Niklas Edin again. They played A LOT better than they did the first time. Edin had a draw to the 8ft against 2 for the win, which he surprisingly missed.

So surely, now it must be time for an easy game? NAAAAAAAH. Onto Ewan MacDonald in the B final, they played pretty good and beat us 5-3.

"It is light as fuck!"

Now on our last chance to qualify, we were playing Alexey Tselousov from the USSR. They played well, frustratingly well. We never really got ahead of them, and even though they gave us an opportunity to make the come back, the wee Russian drew the 4ft to get the quarters.

Re-reading what I just wrote, I don’t think it gives a fair impression of how hard the last 4 games were. To illustrate this further, I will give you a timeline to show the pain.

11.15-13.30 Ulsrud
14.45-16.45 Edin
17.00-19.00 MacDonald
20.00-22.00 Tselousov

So aye, in 11 hours 15 minutes, we were curling for 8 hours and 15 minutes of those. We were heavily regretting the Friday night beer and kebab combo by 8.30pm on Saturday.

Anyone who knows Kerr Drummond, will also know how mature Kerr Drummond is. You will also know that after a night out, this level plumits significantly from an already low starting point. This was proven at 4am on Sunday morning, when Kerr returned to the Holiday Inn Express, still bouncing after a night of boogeying with the local 15 year olds in City, he began to absolutely hammer on our door for a solid 15 minutes, wakening everybody on that floor of the hotel. Like your energy, Kerr. But it is hard to bare at that time of night

Kerr

This weekend will be the polar opposite of the Masters time-wise. It is the first weekend of the Co-operative Funeralcare Scottish Men’s Qualifiers. Absolutely dying to get started. Our first game is 9am Saturday 12th January. Our second game is 9am Sunday 13th January. So we will be curling for 2 hours and 30 minutes in 24 hours. We appreciate the time off, but I think we might get a bit bored.

Any super fans wanting to follow our progress, the results can be found here.

This is actually important curling, so the volume of beer may have to decrease slightly, but that will not and cannot be guaranteed.

Cheeeeeeers min
Team Edwards x