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
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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
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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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New Season

So the new season is nearly upon us and there have been a few things we have had to organise over the past few months. First of all is the competition schedule which is as follows;

03 Oct – 05 Oct               The Ice Bowl Open, Dumfries.

16 Oct – 19 Oct               Euro Playoffs, Perth.

07 Nov – 09 Nov              Edinburgh International. 

21 Nov – 23 Nov              Lockerbie Superspiel.

12 Dec – 14 Dec              Kinross Open.

19 Dec - 21 Dec               Dumfries CCT.

8 Jan – 11 Jan                 Perth Masters.

16 Jan - 18 Jan                Scottish Qualifiers Dumfries.

30 Jan – 1st Feb              Aberdeen City Open.

6 Feb - 8 Feb                   Scottish Qualifiers Braehead.

It looks as if we are going to be in the Dumfries/Lockerbie neck of the woods a lot this season! Nice and close....

This year, Team Edwards have sold out and managed to get a few sponsors on board to make the season a bit easier on the bank account. The sponsors we have secured are;

1) VG Energy

2) Don Valley

3) Ventrolla Tayside

We are going to shamelessly plug each of the sponsors at a rate of one sponsor per blog over the next few weeks. Today it is VG Energy's turn in the lime light!

VG Energy aim to make renewable energy technologies both easy to understand and affordable. They offer a complete all inclusive service for Biomass, Wind, and Solar PV installations and provide a complete turn-key service. 

So if you are really interested in a wind turbine, biomass boiler or solar PV system, mention TeamEdwards100 to receive a limited time discount on any purchase.

Click HERE to access the VG Energy site and get a far better idea of what the service they provide actually is. Each of the sponsors will appear on the right hand side of the Team Edwards blog over the season, so if you ever get the urge for windows, turf or a wind turbine, give them a click! 

With this new found investment in the team, we have decided to go a bit more upmarket with our kit and get some custom made gear from foxglide! Alan Mitchell sent us several options to choose from and the shirts below are the ones we have selected.

We only finalised the order last week so we have not got the shirts yet, but we would recommend people to use foxglide with the service that has been provided so far!

So the first competition that these shirts will see some action is The Sulwath Open in Dumfries next weekend. This will also be our first time on the ice as a team and our only competition before the European Play-offs. Below is the draw.

Our group games are as follows;

Friday 5th October 5.30pm vs Jamie Malton

Saturday 6th October 11.30am vs China

Saturday 6th October 4.30pm vs Graeme Adam

If we manage to qualify out the section, we are really hoping we don't run into the women's section in the quarter finals, as it will more than likely be the end of the weekend for us!

I am sure you will have all heard of Jessica Ennis-Hill, Jenson Button and Rory McIlroy. One thing they all have in common is that they are sponsored by the large Spanish bank, Santander. When we were looking for some sponsorship a couple of months ago, Billy contacted a guy he knew at the bank and asked about getting some cash. Billy's contact said they give all their sponsorship money to the three people listed above. Fair enough, they will probably get the bank a bit more exposure than Team Edwards on the Scottish Curling Tour. A couple days later, Billy received a package with a note saying, "Sorry we couldn't give you any money but here is a signed Rory McIlroy hat, Jenson Button helmet and a Jessica Ennis-Hill t-shirt". All the gear is shown below. 

  

The flowerpot is not included. 

So we do not really have any idea what to do with this stuff but we are still grateful for it anyway! We will maybe do some kind of raffle or auction. If anyone wants to make an offer, give us a shout and we will see what we can do! If you are lucky, we may even throw in a signed John Penny green Team Edwards shirt as worn by the man himself in the C road semi final of the 2012 Perth Masters. That should really sweeten the deal. 

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Summer Update

So the last time you would have heard from us was during the run up to the Scottish Mixed Championship where Dave & Colin and John & Scott played on separate teams. 

Both teams were drawn in the same section so this meant that a pretty massive derby was planned for Friday evening between the two. It was a tight game with the most memorable shot coming from John Penny that made him look like an absolute fool. This was achieved with a shot that I can only ever remember seeing once before, way back in 2004 by an U17 junior girls team in Lockerbie. John Penny actually managed to 'take his one' when playing a THROW THROUGH FOR A BLANK. There is a wee diagram below showing how he actually managed to do this. 

John Penny is a fool.

Despite this ridiculously amateur error, John's team managed to come out victorious over the old boys. The standings in the group were extremely tight with Dave, John and Ewan MacDonald tied for first; through some kind of draw shot ranking/bribery of officials, Dave managed to get the automatic berth in the semi final. JP's team were up against Ewan's loaded team of reigning champs in a 4 end play off to qualify. JP and co were in a bit of a hole being 3 down after 2 ends. The team managed to claw it back and take it to an extra where JP redeemed himself slightly with a pretty phenomenal last shot to set up the steal in the extra. Below is Pye's edited footage of the shot.

After that, it was onwards to the semi finals where Mr Edwards was downed by Kyle Smith but JP's team snuck by Dave Mundell for a place in the final. 

The scoreline in the final against Kyle was actually quite close, but in all honestly, we were absolutely blown off the park. We had to settle for our silver medals this time round. 

Runners-up

So congratulations to Kyle Smith, Hannah Fleming, Billy Morton and the other one that was playing!

The champs sweeping hard and looking natural.

So in a pretty tedious link, I am sure that the majority of you will have already heard that we have made a switch at the lead position with Colin Campbell leaving and Billy Morton coming in. It has been a great few years playing with Colin and although he is taking it easy in terms of curling this winter, we wish him all the best in the future. 

Some of you will maybe not know Billy, so here is a wee introduction.

Billy Morton - Profile

Billy aspires to be a model.

Position: Lead

Hometown: Galston
Resides: Glasgow
Occupation: Farmer
DOB: 15 April 1991
Relationship Status: "Single"

Billy has played with Grant Hardie for the last few seasons but has experience of playing with some members of our team before as he won the 2011 Scottish Juniors with John. Their junior team were also taken under the wing and "guided" through the season by the one and only Greig Henderson, so that will thankfully not be a shock to the system for Billy.

JP and Bill winning the 2011 Scottish Junior Championship. They have both been banned from selecting team trousers because of this.

Both Scott and Billy played in the Stirling Summer Skins last weekend trying to emulate David Edwards' success last season in lifting the trophy. Both didn't make it past the quarters finals which was not too disappointing. There were some bloody late nights. 

Fubar team bonding.

David Edwards was unable to defend his Stirling Skins title this year as he is whipped and has a baby. The news so far from the Edwards household is that the baby is not ginger and looks more like Louise, so good news all round!

Dave looking athletic petting a dolphin.

So this year we are looking to do something that we have never ever done before, and that is play well at the start of the season. We have been invited to participate in the European Playoffs which I have been told include Ewan MacDonald, David Murdoch and Tom Brewster. These will take place in Perth at the end of October. We will only have one event as a team prior to this competition but we will hopefully not have to face any of our standard early season woes as we will not be nursing tremendous hangovers through quarter finals against women's team.

That is it for now,
Cheers
Team Edwards
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Scottish Mixed Championships

So we lied about the previous post being the last one of the season, but I had forgotten about a very important competition!

With the competitive men's season now over, we had to find some women to have a go at winning the Scottish Mixed which is being held at Curl Aberdeen this weekend. David Edwards and Colin Campbell have ditched the younger and stronger members of the team for some more experienced ladies closer to their age range. Last week John Penny and Scott Macleod got the call to team up with two previous European Mixed Gold Medallists, so there wass no way they could turn that down!

So here are the line ups.

TEAM EDWARDS
S - David Edwards
3 - Susan Kesley
2 - Colin Campbell
1 - Fran Stretton

TEAM BREWSTER
S - John Penny
3 - Kim Brewster
2 - Scott Macleod
1 - Karen Barthelemy

With John being the only memeber in his team to have not won the Scottish Mixed before, his position at skip is on a very shoogly peg.

And these are the groups.

Section B is pretty stacked with 66% of the field having someone who has won the Euro Mixed in the last 10 years.

So, as you can see, there is going to be a MASSIVE inter Team Edwards derby. It is scheduled to go down at 7.30pm on Friday night, so come in and witness the event, as there is almost certainly going to be a brawl.

So the big question is, who is your money on for the Friday night classic!!??

The rest of the games will go ahead at the following times.

Friday 7th March - 3pm
Friday 7th March - 7.30pm

Saturday 8th March - 9am
Saturday 8th March - 1.30pm
Saturday 8th March - 6pm

As the numbers for the event are down slightly this year, only two teams from each section will qualify for the KO stages, so that is where we need to be!

Information and results will probably be on the RCCC website HERE.

Thats it,
Cheers
Team Edwards
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Another Scottish Over

So our blogging activities at the Co-operative Funeralcare Scottish Championships died a quick death, so sorry about that, I hope you all managed to survive without it!

Towards the end of the week, our curling shirts were not smelling very fresh. Having 3 identical shirts started to become an issue as the 'smell test' was the only way to accurately determine how many games it had been worn for, this was not a pleasant part of the day. Colin hooked us up with some washing powder so that people could stand within 10 feet of us again!

We are obviously not going to do a review of all the games, because I can not really remember what happened.

Our round robin wins were against;

Logan Gray
John Hamilton
Warwick Smith
Kyle Smith
Grant Hardie
Moray Combe
Ally Fraser

And the teams that managed to sneak a win against us were;

Ewan MacDonald
Lee McCleary.

So that left the table looking like this with us securing a place in the 1v2 game, which is much nicer than the 3v4 game.

But before all of that boring curling, here are a few things that happened at Horselea Lodge.

We were informed by the owner that the water to the Lodge would be shut off for a couple of hours due to maintenance work that had been scheduled. We were supposed to run the taps for a while before using it to make sure everything had gone OK. With Dave being up at the crack of dawn, he was first to try and have a shower. Remembering the instructions from the owner, he ran the taps for a couple minutes to be on the safe side. As there were no issues, he jumped in but quickly discovered there was a problem that he had not anticipated.

The rest of the guys in the house were awoken by a shrill scream coming from the shower as there had been an extremely powerful burst of scolding hot water that had pinned a naked and vulnerable David Edwards to the wall of the shower, unable to escape.

He eventually managed to peel himself off the wall and made it cagily to the power switch to stop the agony.

Despite all of this drama, Dave did well to gather himself and cook for us the entire week. Here is John sampling some of his finest work.

John enjoying Dave's homemade Chicken and Bacon Pie

We also discovered/were reminded how much of a messy bugger Scott is.

In the 1v2 against Ewan MacDonald, we lost a couple of 3's in the first half of the game which ended that campaign pretty early.

So once again, we were against Logan Gray in a semi final. We had not been successful in very many semi finals in the past, so we were keen to get through this one to make our first final as a team. It was a tight game, and to be honest, we were looking pretty screwed in the 10th end against Logan. It seemed like we were going to have to play a very tricky 15ft angle run back with Dave's last to keep our hopes alive. But fortunately Team Gray's last stone just rubbed a guard that opened up shot stone and gave us a hack weight tap for the victory. Dave played a good one that earned us a place in the final. So for the first time in a couple of years, we would wake up on the Sunday morning of the Scottish without the most brutal of hangovers! Hurraaaay!

So into the final it was against Ewan MacDonald!

The game was broadcast by the BBC, so you can catch the highlights of the match on ayePlayer HERE.

So it felt like it would have been quite a good game to watch, as there were a lot of stones in play most of the time.

As I am sure you already know, we ended up losing the game. The line score below shows how it all went down.

Who ever gave the score out to the papers, curlingzone and a few other places didn't manage it very well, as it looks like we got a proper thumping! We somehow managed to give up a steal of 3 in the last end, to lose 9-4, but that was not quite how I remember it going!

Dave scraping the barrel for tactical advice.

So we earned a silver medal. At the presentation we were given the wrong medals as Scott had been promoted to Ladies Coach Silver Medallist!

Correct medal

Ewan MacDonald's team played extremely well all week, and probably had one of the best performances by anyone in the Scottish Championships over the last 5 years.

They will certainly be competing for medals out in Beijing at the World's, so the best of luck to them!

That was the final competition of the season for us. It would have been very nice to get a win in the final of the Scottish, but it was not to be this time, so we will just have to try again next year!

Cheers
Team Edwards
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