Friday 10 October 2014

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
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