European Championships Review

So we got back from Champery last Sunday evening. It has taken until now for me to feel human enough again to actually write a blog!

Tom's smile is fantastic

The Aberdeen contingent of the team met up with Billy and the girls in Amsterdam and we were then on our way to Geneva. We had a day in Champery to figure out the lay of the land and find the good places to eat. What we learned about the places to eat was that they were all ridiculously expensive. During one of the first meals we had, we met a couple of Korean coaches. With this, John Penny took an enormous lead in the "dumbest quote of the week" competition. Tom's tweet captured the moment particularly well.

We created a very basic map to help John in the future to figure out if a country is playing in the EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP.

I know Israel and Iceland are not in the circle, but we are still trying to master the basics with JP.

So after that ridiculous statement we had the opening ceremony. This involved all the standard waiting around for ages and then marching about for a bit. We got bored and took a Team Scotland selfie.

What is Dave looking at?

As usual, we will not really talk too much about the curling. We ended up on a 3-6 record.

We beat;

Norway
Denmark
Czech Republic

We were beaten by;

Everyone else

We had one televised game on Eurosport which was against Germany. With all the exposure we had from this we are just waiting for the modelling contracts to come rolling in.

Below are the links to both the full game and the 4 minute highlights of the game.

Full game

Highlights

The last stone in the 9th end was a fair bool by the German. It is worth a watch. So is the end of the 8th end.

Half way through the week, disaster struck the team. No, it was not when Billy had to come off ill half way through a game, it was when Greig Henderson lost his beloved hat. Greig was constantly on the look out for the hat thief following that. He was determined that the crime would not go unpunished.

Raging. He will catch the bastard one day.

Greig even got the World Curling Federation on the case. He really wanted his hat back.

Despite Greig's best efforts, the hat was never found. As we have not come up for a use of the Rory McIlroy cap, Jenson Button helmet or the Jessica Ennis shirt as of yet, anyone who can return Greig's hat unharmed will get the choice to select any one of these three items. Don't waste your time trying to find a replica, Greig will know a fake from a mile away.

Back to the curling. So after all that we were tied for 7th place with the Germans. As 8th place would be involved in the World Challenge playoff, we had to play a tiebreaker against Germany. I do not think there was an opponent that could have gotten us more up for this game than the Germans given the conclusion of the round robin game.

Thankfully, we managed to win. Which was a massive relief.

All in all there were a couple really good days, some terrible days and a couple where we felt we were a bit unlucky. But it was a great experience and hopefully that will help us in the future.

A big thanks has to go out to Greig, Tom and Soren for all of their guidance and assistance over the course the week. I know it probably was not a very pleasurable experience watching us curl! Also to Maggie for the brutally painful physio! Thanks also to all of the Scotland supporters that came out to cheer us on over the course of the week, it is much appreciated!

So after all of that, we were out the competition with 3 days to spare. So what do you when you have 3 days to spare without having to curl? Well we are all finely tuned athletes, so we obviously did not do anything that would compromise that.

Our next competition is the Kinross Open next weekend. This has the weirdest format of any competition I have ever seen.

A four group, three team, double round robin. Should be interesting. One big positive from this is that we get to beat Hannah Fleming twice! There are some tough teams in this event so it should be a good one.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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