Perth Masters 2013

Our first competition of 2013 was the Mercure Perth Masters. This was our first time on ice since before the festive break.

Scott caught word for a chance of a pre-tournament practice for the team to blast of any rust and perhaps catch out any rogue stones. After sending a few texts to the team to try and generate some enthusiasm for the ice time, he was getting rejected left, right and centre. John and Colin come up with standard excuses, but Dave’s reply hurt the most.

“I can’t. I have an adult job”. Dick.

The Dick in action.

First up was Steve Laycock from Saskatchewan, Canada. They have had quite a good season so far making a semi-final of a Slam and are ranked 15th in the world. In this game they were no match for the Forfar Open quarter-finalists as we ran out 5-2 winners.

Following this was the Calcutta. For anyone who does not know, this is where the teams are auctioned and the purchaser of said team has a chance to win a portion of the prize pool if the team makes it deep into the tournament. This year we sold for £130 to some women curlers.

Calcutta Team photo.

Being the finely tuned athletes we are, we loaded ourselves up on as many free portions of curry and stovies as we could at the ice rink before heading back to the hotel where we consumed some beer.

Winning our first game allowed us to have a long lie where we would face newly crowned European champion, Niklas Edin from Sweden. It was a good game and in the 5th end Niklas had a draw against 5 to tie up the game. He missed, broke his brush, got shouted at by an umpire, and we stole a 5.

Scott and Colin saving another inturn.

Next was Liu Rui, the Pacific champion from China. They did not play very well and we won 7-2. This led to the A final and our first chance to qualify for the KO stages. In the most ridiculous line up of teams we have ever played in a tournament, we were now up against European Silver medallist, Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud. He drew the pin in the 8th end for the victory.

Now this is getting ridiculous. We were on against Niklas Edin again. They played A LOT better than they did the first time. Edin had a draw to the 8ft against 2 for the win, which he surprisingly missed.

So surely, now it must be time for an easy game? NAAAAAAAH. Onto Ewan MacDonald in the B final, they played pretty good and beat us 5-3.

"It is light as fuck!"

Now on our last chance to qualify, we were playing Alexey Tselousov from the USSR. They played well, frustratingly well. We never really got ahead of them, and even though they gave us an opportunity to make the come back, the wee Russian drew the 4ft to get the quarters.

Re-reading what I just wrote, I don’t think it gives a fair impression of how hard the last 4 games were. To illustrate this further, I will give you a timeline to show the pain.

11.15-13.30 Ulsrud
14.45-16.45 Edin
17.00-19.00 MacDonald
20.00-22.00 Tselousov

So aye, in 11 hours 15 minutes, we were curling for 8 hours and 15 minutes of those. We were heavily regretting the Friday night beer and kebab combo by 8.30pm on Saturday.

Anyone who knows Kerr Drummond, will also know how mature Kerr Drummond is. You will also know that after a night out, this level plumits significantly from an already low starting point. This was proven at 4am on Sunday morning, when Kerr returned to the Holiday Inn Express, still bouncing after a night of boogeying with the local 15 year olds in City, he began to absolutely hammer on our door for a solid 15 minutes, wakening everybody on that floor of the hotel. Like your energy, Kerr. But it is hard to bare at that time of night

Kerr

This weekend will be the polar opposite of the Masters time-wise. It is the first weekend of the Co-operative Funeralcare Scottish Men’s Qualifiers. Absolutely dying to get started. Our first game is 9am Saturday 12th January. Our second game is 9am Sunday 13th January. So we will be curling for 2 hours and 30 minutes in 24 hours. We appreciate the time off, but I think we might get a bit bored.

Any super fans wanting to follow our progress, the results can be found here.

This is actually important curling, so the volume of beer may have to decrease slightly, but that will not and cannot be guaranteed.

Cheeeeeeers min
Team Edwards x