Forfar Open

This weekend we made the trip down south for the Forfar Open! This was our second event of the Goldline Scottish Curling Tour which took place only four short days after the European Playdowns in Perth.

Before the details of the tournament, it is time for the third and final sponsor plug of the season!

Ventrolla transforms your old, rattling or rotten windows into beautiful, draught-free, working windows. There are 10 great reasons to choose Ventrolla which can be viewed HERE. But in overview, Ventrolla's range of timber window energy saving measures includes replacement timber double glazing sashes that, in conjunction with their renowned Perimeter Sealing System (VPSS), offer customers a combination of high performance, comfort and style

They are recommended by the top heavy Sarah Beeny, so you know they must be good.

There is a personal interest in generating business for this sponsor as it directly increases the amount of inheritance that Scott will receive in the future so BUY BUY BUY!

Scott is not taller than everyone, he is just ridiculously inflexible. 

Some of you may have noticed that Billy is looking significantly more athletic and fresh faced than he has in the past. Don't be fooled, Billy has not been on on an intense training regime and detox diet. He was not able to make this weekend so we had to call upon the services of Forfar Young Curlers to provide a sub. They provided a very good sub in Adam Flint pictured on the far left.

In the group games, we lost to Lee McCleary first up then beat everyone else. We topped the section and ran into Colin Howden in the quarters. It looked like we were going to lose for a while but managed take it home in the 8th. The semi against Lee McCleary was up and down but a very nice shot for 4 by Dave swayed the game in our favour.

We had done well to avoid playing any women's teams throughout the tournament, but unfortunately, that time was up, we had to play Hannah Fleming in the final.

Face off. In boxing, my money is on Hannah.

It was a good final and we had the hammer and a lead going into the last end. A couple of doubles sealed the deal and we had won our second Scottish Curling Tour event and managed to finally overcome the curse of women that had followed us around for the last season!

Men's and Women's winners!

This has set us up pretty well on the Scottish Curling Tour rankings with the best start we have had by an extremely long way!

Thanks to Mike for once again organising and hosting an entertaining weekend at Forfar Indoor Sports. Mike also celebrated his 65th birthday over the weekend. Many happy returns! A big thanks to Adam for subbing over the weekend, he played great!

Cheers
Team Edwards
X

European Playdowns

Last weekend we competed in the European Playdowns at the Dewars Centre in Perth. This event included David Murdoch, Tom Brewster and Ewan MacDonald and would determine Scotland's representative at the 2014 European Curling Championship in Champery, Switzerland.

In the run up to the event we were at the ice rink a lot trying to find some kind of form so we would not embarrass ourselves at the playdowns. On Monday evening, Dave & Scott played against Brian Gray's Latvians at Curl Aberdeen. Thomas Halder and Fraser Kingan stepped in for Billy and the 'Apprentice Joiner of the Year' as he was away getting his awards. We are pleased to announce that John did receive the award for the second year in a row and we are all very proud of him.

It was not a great start for the Latvian's as the skip unfortunately left his curling shoes and trousers in Stonehaven.

Copyright of Rory Byers

I did feel sorry for him as I have curled in jeans before and they are tight in all the wrong areas. After a few mini games and couple switch-ups of positions, we managed to get the win.

The European Playdowns had a brutal schedule. Through the double round robin we had 6 games over the course of 48 hours. We were tied for second on 3-3 with Tom Brewster which meant that we had an extra game to play. We got by Tom in a close game to reach the final against Murdoch.

Between games we found a decent new restaurant next to Sportsters. While we were contemplating what to order, the waitress asked us what we would like to drink.

Billy - Pint of draught coke please
John - Same please
Scott - Pint of water
Dave - Can I please have a glass of sparkling mineral water?

Billy, with an absolutely horrified look of disgust on his face at the drink order that Dave had just placed, instantly questioned the decision he had made about joining our team and was wondering what he had got himself in to.

Billy lost it when Dave then ordered a seafood risotto.

Risotto and Mineral Water - Too healthy for Billy.

Beating Brewster in the tiebreaker resulted in us having to be in Perth until Sunday. We had not booked a hotel so we had to search for the cheapest options and see what was available. We managed to get into the Lovat Hotel just round the corner which was decent.

It was a best of three final which was turning the weekend into an absolute marathon!

In the first game we got a couple of steals which kept our noses ahead and we took it home in the 10th.

The last two finals were on the Sunday so we had a night to recover before starting all over again.

We fell behind slightly early on but got the steal train running towards the tenth. Murdoch made a relatively simple hit for the win to take it to the third final.

It was an up and down game with a few misses, but that is what happens after 30 hours of curling in 4 days! At points, the game was looking at getting away from us but a 3 in the 8th put us in a good position. Murdoch measured for his second point in the 9th which required us to take a two in the 10th for the win. Dave Edwards had a delicate hack weight hit on a partially visible stone for the game. It didn't curl quite enough and after a lot of sweeping from both John and Greg it was only one and onto the extra. Things were looking OK in the extra with two of our stones biting the top of the 4ft. Murdoch elected to play an inturn draw. He was heavy which left us with a steal of two and the chance to represent Scotland at the European Championships!

Curl Aberdeen posted a video of the last stone.

Team Scotland

Here are a couple news reports from the event.

Big guns have to put their Euro plans on ice...
Muirhead and Edwards lead Scotland's bid
Eve Muirhead through as David Murdoch bows out
Amateur rink are a stone's throw away from World Championships

We have noticed that a lot of the newspaper and TV stuff has been more focused on Murdoch losing than us winning, but we can live with that!

Dave was interviewed this afternoon at Curl Aberdeen, so he should be on STV news tonight so tune in if you want a more in-depth review than the BBC!

We have selected Tom Brewster as our 5th man and Greig Henderson got the pass from Kate to attend!

We are really looking forward to head out to Champery next month and are trying to get a lot of things organised between now and then!

Cheers
Team Edwards
X

Dumfries Open

So we received our new foxglide gear prior to the Dumfries Open. We think the kit looks great and have once again bolstered our position as the best looking team in the world. Pictures of the kit will be peppered throughout the blog. First of all, one of the logos we have on our new kit belongs to Don Valley.

Don Valley have very kindly offered to sponsor the team this year, so it is only fair we give them a plug on the blog!

Don Valley is a family owned specialist turf & seeds company established in 2001 based near Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. They supply a comprehensive range of lawn turf, as well as a range of additional products including grass seeds, top soil and garden bark for all your gardening needs. So please check out their website for more details! If you purchase a product from Don Valley due to this plug, Team Edwards are providing a limited offer that one member of the team (of your choosing), will provide you with one hour of gardening services. We can not guarantee any quality or skill, or even that your garden will look better afterwards, but there will be endless amounts of enthusiasm. (*please see terms and conditions)

(T&C* all equipment, medical bills and lawyers fees must be paid for by the owner of the garden.)

So to the curling. The RCCC posted a preview of the event HERE. Amongst the teams competing were several performance programme teams and two teams from China.

All the Aberdeen boys had the Friday off work and made their way down to Dumfries at a leisurely pace where they would meet Billy for the first competition of the season. We stopped off at the Dewar's Centre for a short practice.

We hit the ice for our first game against the always entertaining Michael Opel from England. We generated a good lead but leaked a couple points towards the end. One event of note from this game was a peel from Scott. With it being the early season, the timing of his slide is not quite where it should be yet. Without a piece of teflon touching the ice at any point, Scott's max effort peel turned into a double knee slide to the top of the house, where he stopped, composed himself, then shoved the stone down the rest of the sheet which then rocked its way towards the sideboard. Amateur. Despite this, we managed to come out on top and headed back the Edwards household to watch some boxing.

New gear

Our next game was against Brad Askew's prodigies from China. It was a one sided affair with us coming out on top 10-0. Two of the Chinese team were having an extremely emotionally charged 'discussion' after the game. After they cooled off we managed to have a drink with them and play a bit of cards.

We beat Ken Horton in our last group game to qualify for the quarters.

We were once again hosted and fed by the Edwards household which was much appreciated! The new grandparents have already been thinking about Iona's future and acquired a bike for the 4 month old which should be suitable for her within the next decade. Here is a picture of Dave testing out the new wheels prior to letting his daughter loose on it.

We faced Jennifer Martin's team in the quarters. They played well but we got very lucky in the first end and got a slightly undeserved 3-0 lead. We ran it home from there and got a place in the semi's.

Bruce Mouat was up next. It was a tied game until the 5th where we took a five. They conceded and it was on to the final.

David Hardie skipped the team with the man with the shiniest head in Scottish Curling throwing last stones. It was a tight and defensive game with Boobsy just missing a 20ft runback in the 8th end which would have taken the game to an extra. This meant we had won the Sulwath Open!

Dave was unhappy with Scott's unzipped jacket. 

This result has propelled us to the top of the Scottish Curling Tour rankings tied with Tom Brewster.
You can read the Scottish Curling Tour's review of the event HERE.

Next week we have a game against a Latvian Men's curling team that are having a training week in Aberdeen. As the game is in Aberdeen, we were not expecting Billy to make the trek up north for just 8 ends. Saying that, we were hopeful that John would be able to make the game. John informed Dave that he would not be able to play against the Latvians. The reason? This is no word of a lie, John Penny is unable to make the game due to him attending an awards dinner where he is to receive the award for 'Joiner of the Year' from Aberdeen College. Congratulations to the young man.

Joiner of the Year 2014

So in place of John and Billy we have acquired the services of Thomas Halder and Fraser Kingan for the evening.

The new tops generated a couple of comments about how 'tight' our new shirts fitted. Keeping that in mind, Mr Stuart McLachlan is a hefty man. Following the strenuous, back breaking labour that he has put in over the last few months installing the ice at Curl Aberdeen, Pye was feeling slim and backed himself to fit into one of Scott's small shirts. To be fair to him, he did get in it. Kind of.

Athlete

Scott now has two small Team Edwards shirts and one XXXL.

Cheers
Team Edwards
X