Lockerbie Superspiel

Last weekend we took part in the Lockerbie Superspiel. Following a hiatus from the last tournament, Team Edwards had their absolute tank of a second back in their roster ready to dominate all on-comers.

The Tank

The weekend began on Thursday evening with John and Dave driving the long road to Perth to pick up Scott in McDonalds at Broxden.  Following a nutritious pit-stop, we were fuelled up for the rest of the journey down to the Edwards family home where we met Colin. We were exceptionally well fed/looked after throughout the weekend by Meg. Much appreciated both by us and our bank accounts!

As we arrived, we were allocated to our rooms for the weekend. John and Colin ended up in Dave’s child hood room which was well indicated by the sign on the door. The stag looking over his herd of hinds in the pasture really was inspiring. I can see why it was Dave’s choice.

Due to some Libyans going a bit raging 24 years ago, there were not that many embarrassing childhood pictures of Dave going around. The best I got was of a young Dave graduating. I think he resembles a chimp.

Chimp boy

As there was a pub quiz on the Saturday night that we desperately wanted to win, we had a training session on Friday evening. John Penny showed the depth of his historical and political knowledge with this gem.

Scott: "Right John, I would normally ask these questions to Rhiann to make her look like a spacker, but today it is happening to you. Who was Che Guevera?"
John: "No idea"
Scott: "Karl Marx?"
John: "…..Nope"
Scott: "Fidel Castro?"
John: "Are these meant to be people?"
Scott: "Kim Jong Un"
John: "I do not know"
Scott: "Lenin?"
John: "Oh aye, he played for Celtic"

Neil Lennon

Vladimir Lenin

We were just about to settle down for the evening on Friday night when we heard some nervous laughter coming from Scott.  As it turns out the fashionista had picked up his gym bag rather than his weekend bag and didn't have a change of clothes.  True to form Scott hit the Lockerbie "High Street" on Friday morning and opted for some sleek looking white t-shirts accompanied with a pants and socks multipack from that famous brand Tesco. A full weekend of clothing for under £20 bargin!

"The emperor's new clothes"

A special mention has to go to avid Poirot fan and daytime TV viewer Kenny Edwards who set everyone right at the quiz about where the show was based.  The world according to Kenny had Poirot placed in "Kentshire" (anyone ever heard of Kentshire?!?) because the people spoke posh English.  Poirot was a Belgian detective based in London for those of you who didn't know, but lets just say the logic used by Kenny to determine that he wasn't based elsewhere in Europe was a little wayward.  I'll go no further than to say I'm not sure a sure a show in a foriegn language would work on ITV!?!

Poirot Superfan

 As for the curling, we will stay true to form and not go into any depth.

Win 14-3 v David Jones. They dropped a couple 4’s, which was very nice of them.

Win 5-4 v Gus Van Imhoff. We had to pick a stone clean for the win against the Dutch team with suspiciously Canadian accents. Stay sharp, stay focused, this is the moment.

Win 7-5 Gavin Flemming. Took a 3 of us in the first end so had to claw it back.

Draw 4-4 David Hardie. We gave up a steal up 2 to make it difficult, we took a 2 in the last end for a tie to win the group.

This led to our quarter final. We were standing at an impressive record of 0-6 for playoff games prior to the tournament, so we went into the game against Christine Cannon’s senior ladies outfit as heavy under dogs. We managed to somehow get through this game for our first ever win in the business end of a tournament. Congratulations to us.

This led to us playing the on fire Graeme Black. Or, he was getting fired….. or needing fired. I can’t remember. It was a good game, with some decent curling. We were lying game for the entire 8th end, but Graeme played a good last shot to leave us an angle run back for the win, which we missed.

So it was off the 3/4 playoff against Gavin Flemming. There was all the intensity, drive and emotion you would expect for a 3/4 with an impending 4 hour drive to follow. Colin ditched us in the second end to go away to work. This left us with 3 players and Scott extremely pissed off as he was now throwing lead. We managed to win the game and the £12.50 prize money that went with it.

Fraser Hare won the tight 7 end final against Graeme Black. Congratulations.

Edinburgh International Roundup

It's taken a while to get round to doing this update, but I thought we'd better provide a summary of the Edinburgh International before we head off to Scottish Curling Tour event at Lockerbie this weekend.

Things started well with a win against Lovold, but they soon took a turn for the worse as we lost three straight to Kauste, Smith and the Russians.  You'll notice I didn't mention the surname for the Russians and there's two reasons for this.  Firstly I would likely make a right mess of trying to spell it and secondly because I think they all had a shot of skipping over the weekend.  If you were to ask us why we lost those games it probably came down to a mixture of average play and some questionable tactics given the ice conditions.  Going into our last round robin match against John Hamilton we had two chances of qualifying for the quarter finals.  One was none and I'm sure you can work out what the other was.  We managed to get a win from this one and finished the weekend off with a W.  We'll move on with a few things to work on from that weekend.

A big thanks goes out to Neil MacArthur for stepping in to replace "The Destroyer" over the course of the tournament.

So off to Lockerbie it is this weekend as we attempt to wipe out the 7 point advantage that Team Barr have over us in the tour rankings.  We're matched up against David Jones in our first game for the second time this season, and with Team Curl One Out also in our section the exciting prospect of a big clash over the weekend looms.

Atholl Factor & Super Sub

If you read our last update you'll know that Scott won't be with us in two weeks time for the Edinburgh International.  Some of our regular followers will remember that Scott was absent last year for the Stirling Invitational as he had to direct traffic at House of Bruar while dressed as a squirrel.  While he mentioned on the previous post that he would be absent this time due to work commitments it transpires that he's actually performing in the local Atholl-Factor auditions in Blair Atholl.  Scott was caught on video last weekend warming up for the big event although it is apparent his voice coach does have their work cut out with only a couple of weeks to go.  His personal manager and sister Rhiann Macleod does appear a little shocked in the video, and we can only assume this is because his song choice was intended to be kept secret.  Phone lines open on Saturday night and I'd personally save your cash, but here's a sneak preview. Thanks goes out to our man on the inside Andy who provided the footage.



If we're being completely honest wasn't that difficult to find a replacement for Scott and we're pleased to announce that Neil Macathur will be joining the team for the event in Edinburgh and also at Stirling later in the month.  I did try to find a photo of Neil in action, but he must be good at hiding from the camera so you'll have to make do with the video of Scott this week.