Kinross Open Champions!

On Friday, John Penny was designated the responsibility of delivering the Aberdeen contingent of Team Edwards to Kinross to compete in the Scottish Curling Tour event.

Scott and John stopped by Curl Aberdeen for a quick practice before heading into town to pick up Mr. Edwards.

Fabulous ice provided by Pye!

After getting to the centre of Aberdeen to pick Dave up at his office, we headed to the Yodel depot where Dave was looking to pick up his brand new Xbox One. This took ages. With John and Scott waiting in the car they decided to investigate. They walked into the depot to see Dave waiting on the Yodel man trying to find his box. After deciding that the muscle of the two baby faced members of the team would not speed up the situation, they left the building. The Yodel employee then asked Dave if John and Scott were his sons. That was pretty entertaining.

The years have obviously not been kind to the members of the Edwards household.

Father Dave back in his prime.

This is how the group games went;

Win vs David Jones 11-4. Opened her up with a 4 in the first end and took things from there.
Win vs Stuart Brand 6-4. Took a 3 in the last end to seal the deal in an alcohol effected 7 end classic.
Win vs Lorna Vevers 9-3. Managed to break the curse we faced playing womens teams.

On the Saturday evening there was a pub quiz organised at the rink. We needed fuel to keep our minds sharp for the quiz, so we made our way out to the Muir Inn for some food. As we walked in, Scott and John were instantly ID'd along with the rest of the team and coach. Greig Henderson passed over his bus pass which was enough to get him a pint.

Greig's ID.

For the quiz, we were sitting at the table with our team, Greig Henderson and 3 members of Team Vevers. As the quiz required teams of 4, somebody had to take the hit and join up with the girls. True to form, Greig instantly volounteered. Dave, Scott and Colin have experienced the abilities of their wise third and knew that their chances of winning would not be weakened by ditching JP. After prying Greig away from Becca, Sarah and Lorna, John was forced out.

There were a mixed bag of results from the table with Team Edwards minus JP(named Colin Campbell's Bush Trimming Services Ltd) coming in a safe second while Team Vevers + JP took a shaky and much assisted second last place.

Colin Campbell is very good at working with bushes and knocking down houses.

Following the quiz, a challenge was offered to eat a Kit Kat with a thick spreading of blue cheese on the top. So rank. A few members of the team attempted the challenge. The results may be posted in the future.

Not an ideal combination

So we had qualified top in our group and were facing the cream of English curling in the quarter final. This was a strong game against Michael Opel and we ran out 7-1 winners after 5 ends.

In the semi we were up against Ewan MacDonald. We had a great first end taking a 3. We didn't do a great job of scoring many points after that we and were 4-3 down with two ends to go. Ewan went hard for the force in the 7th but it didn't set up great for him and we managed to take a 4, we then peeled our way home in the 8th and were rewarded with a place in the final!

We were then up against Grant Hardie, Jay McWilliam, Glass Jaw and Billy Morton in a repeat of the Lockerbie Superspiel final a couple of weeks ago. Grant had beaten Ross McCleary in the other semi, so we had the opportunity to go one point ahead of him in the Scottish Curling Tour if we were to come out on top.

It was  a pretty boring game until the 4th end. With a lot of stones play Grant had to draw to the 4ft against 3. His stone hit a slow track and came up short allowing us to go 4-0 up. We managed to hold on to this one and the final score was 6-1 to win the Kinross Open for the second time!

Kinross Open Champions 2013 - picture taken by Andy R McPherson

So overall it was a good weekend with a win and a solid jump to the top of the Scottish Curling Tour leader board with only the Aberdeen City Open remaining.

Thanks to Kinross for a very well organised tournament with great ice conditions.

Following the prize giving we made our way back up the road eating throughout the journey. Once John had dropped everyone off, he sent this snapchat indicating his unhappiness about the state of his car.

Oh well

That is it!

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Kinross Open

While getting organised for Moscow we have had to complete a couple of administrative tasks. Dave requested that we each send him a photocopy of our passport so he could send them away to Anastasia to sort out our Visas. This was what Scott sent to Dave.

Scott's hilarious attempt at a joke.
 

After Scott being firmly told by David to send a photocopy of the correct page as we were in a rush, he got in line and sent his in. Given the response following the retro pictures that were posted of Dave, we thought that you would enjoy a snapshot of our passport photos.

Here are Scott, John and Colin. Apologies about quality.

Scott 'Heroin Addict' Macleod

John 'the gay one' Penny 

Colin 'Fat Boy' Campbell 

We were unable to obtain Dave and Greig's passport pictures as they never included them in the email. Sly buggers.

Last weekend Scott, Dave, Rhiann and Louise took part in the inaugural Curl Aberdeen Club Bonspiel representing Petroleum CC.

This was the team line-up.

Skip - Scott Macleod
Third - David Edwards
Second - Rhiann Macleod
Lead - Louise Edwards

Outrageous shout.

Despite the girls lacking any experience and skill in sweeping any stones that were sub 2.3 seconds, the team coasted through the first 2 games and earned their place in the final where they would be fighting for the much coveted championship trophy.

Although I said it was a final, it wasn't really, as it was a schenkel. In the final end of the final game, Team Macleod were 1 up without. Being slightly down on ends, the team had to steal to ensure they would top the schenkel. This did not go to plan. With no stones remaining, we were lying one against and the opposition had the tournament in the bag. At the last moment, the opposing skip decided to play the hit for 6 with his last stone as he had nothing to lose........  The diagram below shows what actually happened.

It was actually a hit for 5, but I realised that after I made the diagram.

This gave us the stolen point that we needed to win the tournament in what was an absolute nightmare of a shot for the lad. Commiserations.

Lovely first prize. Tom was not on our team.

Next weekend we are heading down the road for the penultimate leg of the Scottish Curling Tour in Kinross.

As you can see, we are sitting in third. As far as I am aware, ourselves and Ross are the only two teams competing in both of the final two events. So to earn the Galbraith Trophy and £2,000 again, we are needing to take McCleary out at some point.

This is what we have lined up for us in the group stages.

Friday 6pm vs Robert Walker
Saturday 9.30am vs David Jones
Saturday 2.30pm vs Lorna Vevers

As we are playing a women's team in one game, we are almost guaranteed at least one loss.

The Kinross Open will mark the one year anniversary of the infamous 'Cinnamon Challenge'. We will be looking to reinstate the 'Challenge Scott' series, but we are struggling for ideas. If you have any suggestions, you are more than welcome to make a contribution.

We very rarely get comments on our blogs, but this is one that popped up in reply to our Moscow blog and we thought that it deserved a bit of attention!

"I reckon you've fallen for an RCCC stitch up. To ensure you don't win the Scottish, the Russians "invite" you to play in Red Square, Moscow, and pay "all your expenses" and give you more "Vodka than you could ever drink". Double Agent Logan Gray has a hand in this I tell you. Without doubt, Colin and John will be incarcerated for crimes against fashion and sent to the salt mines in Siberia, while Scott "ladies man" McLeod will no doubt be led astray by some Russian mafia's tottie, and will mysteriously acquire a pair of concrete curling shoes in the Volga river. Dave Edwards, well he will be forced to be masseur for the Team Sidorova for the rest of the season. It'll be hell!"

 

Very well done to whoever composed that beast. It made us laugh. Especially the bit where you called Scott a 'ladies man'. Good one. But poor Dave, such a brutal punishment......

If any of you are unsure about what some of the members of Team Sidorova look like. Here is a short video clip that will give you an idea....

No idea how it is still only on 900 views.

 

Cheers

Team Edwards

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The Red Square Classic, Moscow

I know we speak a lot of rubbish on this blog the vast majority of the time, but this one is genuinely true.

Team Edwards will be making their first foreign trip of the season to the newly formed Curling Champions Tour event in Moscow, The Red Square Classic!

The information for the event claims that there will be a "Participation of eight top teams from around the world". Fortunately, they must have not been able to find 8 top teams as Team Edwards got the invite to fill a spot.

Spectacular outdoor location!

Here is what the Curling Champions Tour says about the event.

"On the eve of the Winter Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi, January 19-23, 2014, Moscow will host the Curling Champions Tour Red Square Open men's event....

The tournament will be held in the very heart of the Russian capital - on the very famous Red Square!

A side program of the event will include curling classes held by eminent coaches in addition to a celebrities' contest.

With comfortable conditions lots of activities on and off the ice, fun and excitement are guaranteed for all participants and supporters!"

  

This sounds ridiculously cool. Obviously we jumped at the chance to take up the offer of a free+ trip to Moscow to play some curling in the centre of one of the world's most famous landmarks!

The Red Square is home to some very famous sights, such as the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, and of course, Lenin's Mausoleum. Colin does not know what a mausoleum is, but he is really keen to meet the Celtic manager.

I can not imagine being outdoors in Moscow during the middle of January is going to be very warm.

Wikipedia agrees.

So we are quite looking forward to this and if anyone has any advice on how to get a visa* for Russia, that would be great.

*for John Penny - No, your bank card won't get you in. It is a different kind of visa.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Lockerbie Superspiel 2013

Last weekend we were competing in the Lockerbie Superspiel without usual 3rd, John Penny. For this weekend only, Scott and Colin got promotions to play the dizzy heights of 3rd and 2nd respectively. In at lead we recruited a child by the name of Ross Whyte. Dave was not confident that Scott had the suitable experience, skill or focus to take control of the head when Dave was playing, so this was Ross' responsibility for the weekend which the wee man managed very well.

Scott and Dave left Aberdeen at around 12.30pm for our first game at 4pm against Ross McCleary in Lockerbie. This was really tight. The sat nav in Dave's car estimated an arrival time throughout the journey. When we left Aberdeen, the estimation was 3.56pm. By the time we had hit Stirling, Dave had managed to shave off 11 minutes and we had a solid 15 minutes in the bank to get warmed up and changed. This was when a concerning message flashed up on the sat nav letting us know that there was 16 minutes of congestion ahead of us and our new time of arrival was 4.01pm. Not ideal.

With a slight feeling of panic, we were grateful that the M74 was reasonably clear to make a bit of time back. Scott was extremely thankful that this portion of the journey was short as Dave had stuck his tunes on in the car which included an 80's mega mix of Deacon Blue, The Bangles and Boyzone.

Dave was making big claims that is was not in fact Boyzone, but some guy called Billy Ocean. But I have never heard of him.

You will be glad to hear that we made it down in time. This is how the games went.

Win 3-2 vs Ross McCleary - Pretty tight but were 2-0 up on bullet straight ice.
Loss 11-4 vs Fraser Hare - Got thumped but kept playing for ends.

That concluded the games on Friday. We had a couple of beers during the evening (not including Ross if his parents/police are reading) then headed back to Chez Edwards where we watched some boxing.

Ross was only on the mini Cokes

On the Saturday, this is how the curling went.

Win 6-4 vs Graeme Black - Graeme's nifty footwork gave us a good steal of 2.
Win 6-5 vs Hannah Fleming - This game was no where near as close as the line score makes it
Win 15-4 vs England - The skip went absolutely mental

On the Friday evening we stayed at the ice rink for the pub quiz. This was probably the part of the weekend that we missed John the least, as in the past, his contributions towards anything like this have been less than useful. We had a decent showing with us coming in around 3rd and a very, very, very long way from last, which Hannah Fleming's team of Alice Spence and Jennifer Dodds held a really firm grip off right from the word go.

After the quiz and several beers, Meg Edwards had prepared some chicken curry for us which we were very much looking forward to. We were in fact so looking forward to it, that we could not wait the extra 4 minutes it would take to do two runs from the ice rink to the Edwards household. With us being one seat short in the people carrier, somebody had to take the hit of going in the boot. On this occasion the tallest man in the team took the hit.

In retrospect, we had a child on our team so we probably should have stuffed him in the boot. Oh well.

The group stages left us ranked 2nd overall and we would face the 7th place finishers, Graeme Shedden in the quarter final. It was a good game and we managed to take our standard 4 against Shedden and ran it out 7-1.

In the semi final we were up against the infamous Graeme Black. In a surprising turn of events, Graeme Black actually did not turn up for the game. As reports from Saturday night started to come through, this actually got less and less surprising. Hope you had a good day in bed, Graeme! Scott Hamilton took the reigns and put up a good fight. We stole a 2 in the 5th end and sealed the deal with a 5 in the 7th.

In the final we were up against Grant Hardie. We lost a couple of points early and with finding any kind of draw on the Lockerbie ice extremely difficult, we pretty much stood no chance of making a come back. Grant and his team played very well and finished out the game 6-4 winners. Congratulations to Grant, Jay, Hammy and Billy.

Last year when we were staying at the Edwards household, a couple of pictures from Dave's past made it online which can be found in last years blog here. I won't name any names, but a female family member of Dave's that lives in Lockerbie provided us with some new material for the blog. Here is David Edwards throwing out his sexiest pose before representing Dumfries in some kind of race in 1990.

Dave working it.

 

I would like to thank the female family member of Dave's that lives in Lockerbie for putting up with us for the weekend and for feeding us very well! Next week Team Kerry Barr will be making a stop at the Edwards household as the first leg of the Scottish Women's Championship is being held in Dumfries. Good luck to them.

There is a bit of a break for Team Edwards now until the Kinross Open which is in the middle of December. Between now and then Scott, Dave, Louise Edwards and Rhiann Macleod are participating in the Aberdeen Club Bonspiel representing Petroleum CC...... with Scott skipping. This is going to be great. Rhiann is playing lead because I say so.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Team début for pocket dynamo

Team Hedge and Lawn Garden Services will head off to Lockerbie for the next round of the Scottish Curling Tour, minus third man and team lightweight, John Penny. John is currently preparing for a trip to Jamaica in a last ditch attempt to keep his Winter Olympic dream alive after he was cruelly left out of the GB curling team by the selectors. John will dawn a skin suit in a bid to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, Sanka Coffie, and make the four man Jamaican bobsleigh team.......make sure you have those socks packed John.

John stuffed out to the max

John's replacement was discussed at great length. We decided that we wanted a like for like replacement in size so that there would not be a significant change in sweeping power. This involved finding someone the same height, weight and strength as John. Obviously, with those stipulations, there was only one place that we could go and look. Yes, that is right. The under 17 junior curling circuit. Stepping into the breach for the weekend will be Scott Robertson's 5ft nothing, 45 kilo teenage protege, Ross Whyte. Following some tough negotiations over performance related pay, Ross agreed to take the step down from his U17 team for the weekend and will provide the boys with some much needed boost in strength.

Ross in action.....

The lads will need to be on their guard over the weekend as Ross has a reputation for partying hard and womanising, which will put the guys clean living to the ultimate test.

Only the hard stuff will do for Ross

We'll be staying at the Edwards household again over the weekend which means we'll be heading home about 2 stone heavier than we arrived, but we'll have had a good feed.

For Team Edwards super fans, who just can not get enough of Team Edwards, the semi final and final from the Edinburgh International are available on archive.

Team Edwards v Team Hardie
Team Edwards v Team McCleary

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Edinburgh International Champions!

Last weekend we were competing in the Edinburgh International. Dave was a previous winner of the event way back in 2005 and was keen to replicate this success.

2005 Edinburgh International Winners with Dave as a scrawny, specky 26 year old.
©Hugh Stewart

John and Scott left Curl Aberdeen on Thursday evening bound for Edinburgh where they would be staying with John's in-laws for the weekend. Due to Colin's contacts at the ice rink, we managed to arrange a team practice at Murrayfield on the Thursday evening. Unfortunately, Dave was unable to attend as Louise was busy measuring him up so she could get an appropriately sized display case that she could keep his testicles in.

Extra Small

After the practice, John and Scott made their way out to Currie where Bob and Jane Barr's farm is situated. Some of you may already be aware that Bob and Jane were just about to head out to Jamaica for their 30th anniversary. When JP and the Destroyer arrived, Jane was still in the midst of packing and needed some assistance. John and Scott volunteered/got roped in to helping and were delegated the tasks of packing up Jane's many bikinis and collecting an assortment of Bob's skimpy speedos. JP tried on both sets to make sure that they would be a suitable fit. They were not a suitable fit.

Dave begged to be allowed outside for the weekend and was finally granted permission so he made his way down to Edinburgh on Friday morning for our first game.

This is how the games on the first day went.

Win 7-2 vs Gulbis
Loss 5-6 vs Sik

Dave was also staying at the Barr household for the weekend and was sharing a bed with Scott in Kerry's old room. On the first evening in the room together, all of the horrible memories Scott had from the European Mixed in Copenhagen came rushing back when he was startled by a sound coming from the other side of the bed. The sound resembled that of an enraged rhino. Thankfully, is was not an enraged rhino, it was only Dave who was snoring ridiculously loudly.

The next day had 3 games in store for us. This is how it went.

Win 6-2 vs Kyle Smith
Win 5-4 vs Hoiberg
Win 12-1 vs Ross McCleary

This qualified us top of our section and we ran into Fraser Hare in the quarter final. It was a tight game and we had an open nose hit for the game in the last end. We made the shot and were then up against Grant Hardie in the semi. We had the hammer and started scoring early which takes a lot of stress out of curling. We kept it clear pretty well and ended up winning 6-1.

In the final we were once again playing Ross McCleary who was competing in his third straight final. Ross had taken out the money teams in the quarter and semis so was obviously on a good run of form. We had the hammer and started scoring early, the key to the match really was the second end where we managed to steal a 3. Much like in the semi, it makes the score line look very one sided, but we are well aware that on a different day the games will be a lot closer. It ended 7-2 after 7 ends and Team Edwards had won their first Curling Champions Tour event......... and the first prize of £5000 which made Scott and John weak at the knees.

2013 Edinburgh International Winners with Dave as a chubby 34 year old.
©Graham Young

The full £5000 was paid out in £50 notes. This resulted in a stressful 24 hours for all members of the team as they now had twenty five £50 notes in their wallets praying to everything and anyone that they didn't get mugged.

On the way home, John stopped into Burger King as a reward for his hard work and to make his first purchase with one of his pristine £50 notes. Scott received this text from John.

John:       First thing to spend a £50 on..... A BK.... They don't like £50's.......
Scott:      Haha. Great. Did you have to stick it on your card?
John:       Aye! :(

Thwarted at his first attempt.

Also a couple of links from the weekend.

Superstar Colin Campbell
EICC - Dominant performance in the final

Thanks to Bob and Jane for putting us up for the weekend, it is very much appreciated.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Edinburgh International Curling Championships

EDIT: I completely forgot to add this on the last blog. During our first game on Saturday morning at the Inverness Skins, following two games where we had won £54-£0, we still had to explain the rules of skins to John throughout the game. It fills us with confidence to have such a tactical powerhouse on our roster. Space cadet.

This weekend we are heading down to Murrayfield Ice Rink for the Edinburgh International. This will be our first Curling Champions Tour event of the season which can be abbreviated to CCTV event if you are Grant Hardie giving a panic stricken interview. Here is our draw. We are listed as Edwards. 

This will be Scott's first time at this event for a couple of years as he has previously been busy directing traffic dressed in a squirrel costume, if you believe Dave's bullshit.

This weekend John has organised some accommodation for the team at the Barr household. The bank accounts are very grateful for this as hotels are turning out to be quite expensive! I just hope Caitlin doesn't dump him in the next couple of days.

As there is some good money in this event, we may have to taper down our socialising a tad as our early morning performances have not been anything to write home about. Here is the link for the Edinburgh International Curling Championships website where the results will be. There is a webcast streaming from this event but unfortunately we have not made the cut.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Curling with weird rules

It started out on Thursday evening with Scott travelling out to Westhill to stay at Dave's. This was so that we could get away early and avoid the ridiculous Aberdeen rush hour traffic as our first game was at 12.20pm.

The plan for the journey was very well organised. Scott and Dave were to travel to Old Meldrum where we would ditch Dave's car and get a lift to Inverness with John. With google maps estimating a 3 hour journey time from Aberdeen to Inverness we planned to leave at around 8.30am which would hopefully end up with us getting in around 11.30am. That would give us sufficient time to go through our rigorous warm up routine and get some lunch. That plan was thrown out the window almost instantly as Scott was woken up by Dave with a thump on the door just before 9am.

"SCOTT!!! We have slept in! Get up!"

We gave John a call to let him know the situation. Being the very thoughtful third that he is, he made his Mum cook us 4 bacon rolls which were ready to go when Dave and Scott arrived. 

Cheers Elaine!

After John razzed it up the rest of the way, we were there in plenty time and even had a chance to pose for a photo in front of the Team Edwards Supporters Club Bus.

John and Dave in front of the fan bus. 

Skins is a weird game. If you don't know what it is, I am not going to explain it, but the game is scored in money won. This is how the Friday went for us. 

Richard McKenzie £54-£0

Stuart Taylor £54-£0

One incident from our first game was when Scott horribly misread a call from our skip. Dave placed his brush at the edge of an opponents stone with the plan to make a hack weight take out. By the time Scott was at the tee-line Colin was already screaming "WAAAAAAAAAY UP!!!" and then clocked a 1.78s peel.

Despite that, overall it was pretty good. After this we had a few drinks at the ice rink and then headed out to Johnny Foxes which is the place to be on a Friday evening in Inverness. As we had an 8am game, we kept it light and decided to call it a night at 1.30am when Scott started swaying a bit too much.

This is what the Saturday had in store for us. 

Mike McInnes £54-£0

Keith Prentice £41-£13

Hannah Fleming £54-£0

So we really could not complain about the results from our round robin! Winning £257 from a potential £270 was pretty nice.

In the last round robin game Dave used psychological warfare against Hannah Fleming quite effectively. 'Psychological warfare' could be switched with 'trying to be as annoying as he possibly can'. Alice Spence is colour blind and couldn't keep her hands off Team Edwards' stones.  

After the game we stayed at the ice rink for the raffle, curry and beer. We decided to not make an appearance at Johnny Foxes on Saturday night and instead headed into town for some more calories. Colin ordered a kebab that contained a portion of chips and about three quarters of a cow. 

In the QF we were up against Ross McCleary. In this game we did not really have very many shots to win any skins. Thanks to the scoring system in place we were still in contention to win the game late on even though we had done absolutely nothing to deserve it! We lost the game at that point and played the last end out to keep our pride as we did not want to get skinned. The last end was a carryover and we managed to win our last £30 of the weekend on the team draw shot challenge. 

We are back curling very soon, but I will probably do another blog for that bit. 

Cheers

Team Edwards

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Inverness Skins

After a couple of weeks wallowing in our pain due to our semi-final defeat to girls at the Forfar Open, we are now trying to slowly build our confidence back to an acceptable level for the Inverness Skins this weekend. 

This is going to be a new experience as we have never played in this event, but from what we have learned the event is very professional and high quality curling is the main focus for all the competitors....... 

Here are the groups.

Friday 12.20pm v Richard Mackenzie
Friday 4.30pm v Stuart Taylor
Saturday 8.00am v Mike MacInnes
Saturday 11.40am v Keith Prentice
Saturday 3.50pm v Hannah Flemming

Dubious about how beneficial the timings of these games are. I can already envisage some big issues being involved with finishing at 6pm on the Friday and then curling at 8am on Saturday.

On Sunday evening Scott and Dave once again continued their season long game. With Scott's nutrition from the previous 24 hours consisting mainly of Tennent's and chicken pakora, the odds were against him in this one.

Dave trying to bail out

In a suprising turn of events, Scott actually managed to win.

Scott 2 0 0 3 - 5
Dave 0 3 1 0 - 4

This has made the score so far 20-8 in Scott's favour.

Highlights from this game included Scott going for an aggressive through the port come around to try and steal 3 in the second end. Unfortunately, due to him being 10ft heavy and equally wide he managed to clear a guard and tap Dave in giving him a double for 3. It was much the same story in the next end where Scott was left a relatively simple tap back for 1. Unfortunately he was drawn into throwing a 20ft angle run back at hack weight for 3. The angle run back was not made.

With all of the enthusiasm for the 2014 Men of Curling Calendar, we are currently assessing the demand for a Team Edwards curling calender. If seeing John's hairy nipples and Scott's milk-bottle white skeleton of a body intrigues you, let us know and we will see what we can do.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Forfar Open Full Blog

Last weekend we were in action at the Forfar Open. Up until a couple of days before the tournament we still did not have any accomodation booked. John Penny came through for us and found a lovely self catering cottage on the outskirts of Forfar.

Before making our way to the cottage, we had to go to Tesco to stock up on some food. With an athletes shopping list of:

1. Bacon
2. Eggs
3. Bread
4. Full Fat Milk
5. 20 cans of Stella
6. Meat Feast Pizza x2
7. Bacardi Breezer Spritzer Mixed Berry - A sparkling drink with fruit wine and fruit flavours.

With that, we had all we needed. So, I hear you asking if we were expecting female company at our cottage due to the Bacardi Breezer Spritzer Mixed Berry we bought?

Looking like we do, it is always a possibility, but nah, that was for John. The wee lad has not yet acquired the taste for beer so this was the drink that he demanded to wash down the pizza with.

John's 'Beer'

Stocked up we decided to make our way to the cottage. Dave stuck the address into the sat nav and we were away to meet the owner of the property to give us the keys. We were heading down dirt tracks and private roads for miles and miles. At this point we were starting to worry, what kind of place had John booked us into? When we arrived our fears were not alleviated as an 80 year old women wearing sandals rolled out of a van and showed us around. Thankfully, she ended up being a very nice lady with an impressive moustache.

Because the blog is so late the scores have actually been taken off the net. But I will make educated guesses about how it went.

Ian Young - Win 13-3
Craig Joiner - Win 13-3
David Jones - Win 12-4
Robin Brydone - Win 11-4
Marc Haggart - Win 8-3

So we tore through the group stages scoring a lot more shots than we usually do. We topped the group and we were facing John Hamilton in the quarter final on Sunday morning.

But before that we experienced the hospitality at Forfar Indoor Sports until 2am. Mike Ferguson had organised 'Play Your Cards Right' as entertainment for the night. The winner of the event would take home the grand prize of £50. Before this, Mr Edwards offered Scott's services to act as Mike's beautiful assistant, Deirdre, for the evenings activities. Scott turned out to be quite the looker.

Colin getting an eyeful

Colin and Rachael Simms made it through to the final playoff to decide the winner. Colin came out on top and the £50 winnings were fired straight back into the bar.

The presentation

Now, after the events of the night before we had to wake up and try and play some curling. We were dying from our hangovers. Absolutely buckled. It may have been just a coincidence, but we had lost a lot of our ability to curl and had to steal in an extra end for victory against John Hamilton.

In the semi finals we ran into the qualifier from the girls section. Obvisouly, our eyes lit up when we saw this as we were pretty much had a garaunteed place in the final.

That ended up not being the case. We were up against Kerry Barr's team who we have a fair amount of personal connections with such as sisters, sister in law's, ex team mates etc. So the winner would have bragging rights for a fair while. It came down to the last end where we were tied with the hammer. We had a hit in stick for the win which did not hit or stick.

Then the realisation hit us. We had just lost to girls.

Kerry went on to get beaten in the final by Ross McCleary.

Thanks to Mike and everyone at Forfar Indoor Sports for a great weekend!

Tune in next time for the Inverness Skins.
Will we have learned our lesson about drinking too much?
Probably not.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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We lost to girls.

I have not had time to do a full blog on the Forfar Open.

But I will give you a quick run down just now. We lost the semi final to some girls. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus.

The girls were Kerry Barr, Rachael Simms, Rhiann Macleod and Barabara McPake. Congratulations to them.

Full blog to come eventually when I get pictures and stuff.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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The Sulwath Open

Last weekend Team Hedge and Lawn Garden Services made the long trip down to Dumfries to participate in the Sulwath Open. This was the first time that the team had ever competed in this event but we decided to give it a go as the Scottish Qualifiers are going to be held there in January.

Because we are tight, we have stayed with the same team shirts as last year. Due to our previous seasons smock tops being almost useless, we gave Colin the responsibility to find some Team Edwards hoodies. He came through for us and delivered them ready for our first game.

New hoodies

In our first game of the season we were lined up against Martin Lill from Estonia. Unfortunately for them, they only managed to field one player so we got the victory by default. With the sheet going spare we decided to have a team practice with the main goal to boost Colin's confidence following his two awful attempts at the 'Trick Shot Challenge'. If you have not yet had a look at the video, it is on the blog post prior to this one. For the practice, we allowed Harri Lill from Team Estonia to join in with us, which in retrospect, was not a very good idea.

This is how our group games panned out with a short description of each game

Win 6-0 v Martin Lill. We didn't miss a shot.
Loss 4-3 v Kyle Smith. Gave up a 2 in the 7th and a steal in the 8th.
Win 6-2 v Alan Mitchell. Nothing of note.
Win 13-5 v Ross Whyte. We needed the ends.

We (unjustifiably) topped the table following those performances which may have been assisted quite heavily by the 6 end boost from the first game.

This lined us up against Duncan Gracie and Team Curl One Out in the Quarter Finals on Saturday evening. There was a lot of pressure on John, Scott and Colin to perform in this game as David had very kindly returned to us following his outstanding performances with Team COO over the summer. The game was closer than the scoreline makes out, but we managed to win 7-3.

On Saturday evening the ice rink hosted an on-ice remote control car race which was open to anyone who wanted to sign up. The challenge involved a practice lap followed by a timed lap. Everyone from Team Edwards took part but the stand out performance came from John Penny. Previously JP has not come across as extremely proficient in racing based activities and his practice lap echoed those performances. John managed to jump the track and get the controller jammed on maximum acceleration which led to the very expensive remote control car to crash head on at full speed into the ice rink wall. For the second lap John somehow managed to find some talent posted the fastest lap time of the competition. This pushed Graham Shedden into second. Graham did not like that so he challenged John to a 1v1 dual to see who was in fact the best. After 5 minutes of Graham going the wrong way and being lapped by John it was clear JP had won. There were then claims that Graham had a faulty controller but those were soon silenced when the pair switched controllers and the exact same thing happened!

Throughout Saturday evening Team Edwards sampled some of the drinks provided by Sulwath Brewers. Dave was a fan of Galloway Gold and ordered a 5 litre keg which he picked up on Sunday morning.

Dave's Beer

The semi final on Sunday morning was against Martin Lill from Estonia, but unfortunately this time they showed up. It was a pretty tight game and we managed to achieve a small lead coming towards the end of the game. In the 8th end we were 2 up without hammer and due to some truly horrific peeling from both Scott and John, we managed to give up a 3 to lose 6-5. Team Estonia went on to win the tournament and the Braehead Open this weekend. Congratulations, but that is the last time we are ever letting someone practice with us!

Over the weekend we were once again hosted by the Edwards family and were once again extremely well fed! Thanks very much to Meg.

Next up on the Scottish Curling Tour is the Forfar Open on 11-13 October.

As Scott is now Aberdeen based, Scott and Dave will be able to practice together more often. Today was the first time this happened. Having heard that Kerr Drummond and Dave had a season long game last year, Scott and Dave decided to start one. Today's part of the season long game started very well for Scott with the line score going as follows.

Scott 2 2 5 0 4 0 2 - 15
Dave 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 - 4

It was a dominant performance from a clearly superior player. The frequency of reports from this game will depend on how well Scott is doing.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Summer Training

Team Hedge & Lawn Garden Services started their summer training yesterday at Curl Aberdeen. Unfortunately, the owner and proprietor of Hedge & Lawn Garden Services, Colin Campbell, was unable to attend the full training day as he was once again up to his neck in bush.

He did make a small appearance towards the end of the training session for the "Team Hedge & Lawn Garden Services Trick Shot Challenge". Make sure you watch until the end to view his impressive attempts.

Thanks to Pye for all of the video editing.

So we are heading down to Dumfries tomorrow morning where we have already been awarded our first victory due to our Estonian opponents not arriving until 3 hours after the first game has finished.

If we keep this up, no one can stop us!

Our first game where we will actually get some ice time will be 7.30pm on Friday evening against whomever the mighty Schenkel decides.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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End of an Era

Last month, Dave played in the Stirling Summer Skins with Team Curl One Out. They managed to scrape through the group stages before running into the might of Team Greg Drummond in the quarter final. Greg's team were firing well and ranked No.1 after the group stages. This was of no surprise as Greg's team of pros had had many hours of summer training under their belt. Team COO having had no ice time in several months only made it through to the quarter final stages after skinning Logan Gray in their last group game.

With some chat about the prospect of the two teams meeting prior to the tournament on Twitter, I think both teams were eager to come out on top. We are unsure as to how the game played out, but apparently, Greg's team were on the wrong end of very one sided spanking, according to Kenny.

Prior the final, Team COO ploughed through Hannah Flemming in the semis, before meeting Michael Goodfellow's international rink to play for the championship. Team COO some how came out winners and were crowned champions of the Stirling Skins. Congratulations.

The champs

The good times didn't last for long. Team Edwards have some bad news.

A couple days after the Stirling Skins; John, Colin and Scott received this disappointing email from Dave.

David Edwards "After my heroics with the boys at the (Stirling Skins) I'm moving onto bigger and better things.............have a good season."

So cold. This was obviously a blow to everyone on the team, and I am sure, to our hoards fans.

It took about a week for Dave to realise the logistics that were involved with his new team. He would either have to have Kenny sweeping for him or have Kenny skipping and telling him what to do. So obviously, with only those two horrendous options available to him, he came crawling back to John, Colin and Scott with his tail between his legs. 

With the team line-up now finalised, we are looking towards our first event of the season. We are starting out with the Dumfries Ice Bowl Open which on 20th-22nd September. Our first game is against the Estonian national team, Martin Lill. 

This is how our section rounds out with the top 5 advancing to the playoff stages.

David Edwards

Kyle Smith

Scott Robertson

Ross Whyte

Cameron Bryce

Martin Lill

Maggie Wilson

Alan Mitchell

The event website and full draw is HERE. 

We have never played in this event before but we thought we would give it a try as the Scottish Playdowns will be making a visit to rink early next year. Another large factor that is drawing us to this tournament is the prospect of being hosted by Meg Edwards again. The last time the team stayed at the Edwards residence, we all left a solid 4 kilos heavier. Looking forward to the feed!

But before all this we have our intensive on ice summer training programme start and adhere to.

Our on ice summer training programme will commence on the 18th September and will wind down around the 19th September just in time to be in peak performance for Dumfries. This will take place in Curl Aberdeen and the team will be around to sign any autographs. 

That is all

Team Edwards

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Conference Call

First of all, a quick round up of what happened at the Scottish Mixed Championships.

We were awful.

Things were going really well at the mixed until the completion of our first game. This was when Kerry, Louise and Scott made a stop at Tesco to stock up on food and alcohol for the remaining days of competition. With Scott running about and riding on the trolley and Louise shouting at him to "watch out for the other people!" we maybe should not have been too surprised with what went down next.

With Scott eagerly bagging the items at the end of the checkout and Louise ready to pay at the till. The cashier came out with this beauty. He asked Louise, while pointing at Scott, "Is this your son? If not, he has to show ID."

As you can imagine, with Louise and Scott being 28 and 25 respectively, this was not exactly a compliment to either of them. But still definitely worse for Louise.   

With the front ends confidence decimated our chances of becoming Scottish Mixed champions were all but over and we are placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of Rajesh the cashier from Tesco Extra.



Mother and Son

For the 2013-14 season Team Edwards will remain intact with David, John, Scott and Colin once again.

To discuss what tournaments we are going to play in next season, Dave organised a conference call on Skype.  We were due to start the call at 8pm on a Thursday night a couple of weeks ago. Dave was first online at 7.52pm, quickly followed by Scott a couple minutes later. Colin arrived just before 8pm, but still on time.

John was not so sharp. With no sign of him for 20 minutes, we decided to give him a call.

John "I am really struggling to get on to Skype. Do I have to have an account? Maybe the computer isn't working. I will go and download it on the laptop. What website do you get it from?"

That is a slight embellishment of how the phone call went, but it was along those lines. It also gives you an idea of what kind of technological incompetency we were dealing with. The folks of Old Meldrum are hoping to have broadband by 2018. Anyway, an iPad, a laptop and a desktop computer later, John finally arrived in the conference call 40 minutes late. The picture below shows the welcome that he received.

Fud

Obviously, in the 40 minutes John was not in the conversation. The other 3 had discussed all our options and had decided what tournaments to play in.

One thing of note is John Penny is away in Jamaica for pretty much half the season. So we will be looking for a replacement for a couple of competitions. Due to the great volume of high quality responses we received last time we put up an offer to play for Team Edwards, we are going to do it again. Call David Edwards.

John's new look for the second half of the season.

Colin unfortunately did not choose the best location to hold the conference call as he was in a room with his young nieces and nephews. Their vocabulary over the course of the call may have been developed a little too far at some instances.

And finally the events we are actually competing in. Unfortunately, Soren never gave us a call offering to fund a few foreign trips so we will be once again traipsing up and down the length of the country competing in the Scottish Curling Tour, which was a lot of fun last year!

I can not remember the dates or order, but here we go.

Dumfries
Inverness
Forfar
Edinburgh
Lockerbie
Kinross
Masters
Aberdeen.

We will probably enter the Scottish as well.

That's it.
Cheers
Team Edwards
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Team Edwards New Line-up

Haha. Bet that title tricked you. It is only for one weekend, so just calm yourself down.

For the last event of the season, Team Edwards are swapping John “the best looking man in Scottish curling(1)” Penny and Colin “the bush-trimmer” Campbell for a couple of women. The countdown towards the Scottish Mixed Curling Championships has begun. It is 12 days, I just had to count.

Colin will actually be competing in the event with Team Duncan Fernie. Last year they did quite well and lost out in the final. But this year, they will be struggling, as Team Edwards are back in action. Last time round, both Dave and Louise Edwards did not compete as Dave was out in Switzerland on 5th man duties with Team Brewster. Dave is the real victim of the Team Brewster 5 man rotation system as he no longer gets the opportunity to match stones and carry the brush bag for the greats of Scottish Curling. It is a travesty.

Kerry and Scott played separately with John Hamilton and Kenny Kinnear respectively. Both were hopeless and crashed and burned before the playoff stages. So in an attempt to relive the successes of 2010 and 2011, we are back together(2).

Here are profiles of both of the incomers and what their key responsibilities are for the weekend. The responsibilities are listed in order of importance.

Louise fighting against the discrimination she has faced all her life.

Name: Louise Edwards
Position: Lead

Main Responsibilities:
1. Bake cakes
2. Make sure Scott and Kerry turn up for the game
3. Carry the brush bag
4. Play some corner guards

I don't really know what she is doing.

Name: Kerry Barr
Position: Third

Main Priorities:
1. Don’t get in Scott’s way while he is sweeping
2. Hit like a man
3. Don’t sweep like a girl
4. Guard up the phenomenal situation Scott has left Team Edwards in.

Mixed Draw

Friday 29th March 11.00am vs Bruce Mouat
Friday 29th March 3.30pm vs Bye
Friday 29th March 8.00pm vs David Aitkin

Saturday 30th March 11.15pm vs Neil McArthur
Saturday 30th March 3.45pm vs Kyle Smith

So it is a tough schedule which I am sure I will make a lot tougher by burning the candle at both ends. Looking forward to it!

Cheeeeeeers
Team Edwards with women
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(1) only the opinion of one person
(2) Scott was not playing in 2010 when we actually won the Euros. No matter what he claims.