Trick shot of the Weekend - Scottish Playdowns - Team Edwards

Petrofac Aberdeen City Open 2014

This weekend we have the final event of the 2013/14 Goldline Scottish Curling Tour. The link to the event's website is HERE.

Below are the sections, which apparently, are no longer up to date, but it is close enough.

The draw is done in quite an unusual manner as we do not know who we are playing until just before our first game, when the draw will be made. We could be playing any one of the teams in the red section. Hopefully the Korean Ladies. We have four games in the schenkel and the times are as follows;

Draw 1 12.30pm Friday 31st January
Draw 2 6pm Friday 31st January

Draw 3 9am Saturday 1st February
Draw 4 2.30pm Saturday 1st February

So this is the situation in the Scottish Curling Tour after 7 events.

Mathematically, Grant Hardie (Jay McWilliam) can still win the tour, but that would require them to win the event and both ourselves and Ross to not make it to the quarter final stages. We learned today that Grant Hardie will be replaced by Andy Mac.... soooooo, not quite a like for like replacement, but they will still be decent. Our single point advantage over Ross McCleary means that if we can match his result in this event, we will win the tour! So that is what we are going to try and do.

For the second year in a row, the virile Dave Edwards will be AWOL for the first game of the Petrofac Aberdeen City Open. You would have thought that for the final leg of the Scottish Curling Tour, when things are so close at the top of the rankings, all members of the team would be fully focused on peak performance for this event. But no, he will be bailing and handing the reigns over to John Penny for one game only.

We have hired Derrick Sloan as our replacement due to his prowess in the Aberdeen Super League where he has made some powerful performances under the tactical wizardry of Roy Haites.

Derrick Sloan

Derrick's tactical experience was a key factor in his selection as there will inevitably be many points throughout the game that John and Scott will need guidance.

A few blogs ago I mentioned a very lucky shot Dave played in the Scottish Qualifiers against Kyle Smith. For some reason, I can not get it to play on this blog. So it will go in it's own separate one which will come straight after this.

Thanks to Dumfries Curling for uploading that belter anyway.

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Moscow Finale!

We discovered that Greig Henderson had been moonlighting as a model for 'Bosco' who are the manufacturers of the Sochi 2014 gear. His face and legendary moustache are plastered on advertising boards all around Moscow.

There is only one moustache like that

So now for the socialising part of the Moscow tour! Straight after our last game, we had to make a sharp exit as we were heading for a traditional Russian spa.

First of all we had a guided tour of the massive spa that was spread across 9 buildings. The woman who gave us the tour was extremely passionate about the spa........ scarily passionate at points actually. She didn't speak any English so the tour was translated from Russian to the teams. It was extremely hard to keep a straight face when her very expressive movements were combined with her very loud and sharp commentary. This made her extended periods of eye contract with individual members of the group terrifying! She would have been a great leader of a prison or an army. Hats off to Marina for being able to translate that, it took some major skills.

We then got to enjoy the luxury of the spa with our team's own private room. For this, you had to wear a bed sheet to maintain your modesty and a really weird hat that made you lose all of the modesty that you had just maintained.

Get your sunglasses on folks, you are about to see 3 pasty white Scottish bodies. Those of a sensitive nature should look away now........

#athletes

So in the wee room we had a meal that was accompanied by a bottle of vodka. Scott's prowess at drinking straight vodka is extremely low. But as I am sure you are all aware, this is not an excuse that will pass on Team Edwards as he was forced to consume his quarter bottle. After taking each shot his face was likened to that of  'a dog licking piss off a nettle'.

It was no Glen's

The boys made their way into the spa, which was pretty toasty. The unusually shaped hats were supposed to protect your face from the heat, but I think the Russians might have just been trying to make us wear the most stupid thing possible. In the spa, there was part of tree in a bucket of water. We assumed we were meant to hit each other with it, so obviously, we tried to do that with as much force as possible. Colin was left with a lot of leaves on his back. We are not sure that we got the intended benefit from it.

The champ

In a spa, with a group of 4 competitive men, there is obviously going to be a challenge. This time it was 'who could last the longest in the searing heat of the spa'. The first man out was John Penny who was closely followed by Colin Campbell. Scott Macleod did not last much longer and David Edwards stayed in for an extra 10 minutes to be a show off.

On exiting the sauna, you were supposed to jump in a freezing plunge pool, and for the 100th time that week, the nuts made hasty retreat as we all developed a great soprano voice.

We went back to the hotel for some more beer and John left Scott to teach our 'translators' some English solo. Cheeeeeeers min. They are all probably worse off than before! After that, we once again played some cards with the Canadians.

The next day was the closing ceremony of the event.

Scott should not be trusted with a flag

This day was pretty cold and we got masses and masses of photos taken of us. Following that, we were keen to go out on the town in Moscow. Being shown around by a group of students was ideal as they had a very good idea of where all the affordable places were! But first of all, Greig Henderson highly recommended a bar that he had discovered a couple of nights earlier. When we walked through the door, we were instantly aware why he was so keen to visit this place again. Every waitress in the building was wearing an extremely short mini skirt and served beer by the litre. Nobody on the team was going to fault him for picking out this gem.

Big beer + short skirts = good pub

We were supposed to be meeting the Swiss, Canadians and Danes at the Red Square to make our way to the bar together. We were pretty far away so we jumped on the Moscow subway. It was deep enough to be a nuclear war bunker and was stacked out with murals of tractors and Lenin for some reason.

From there we went to a bar called Coyote Ugly. It was themed on the film and was just like a slightly less energetic version of THIS video (scantily clad women dancing on the bar). It was unusual and definitely not the type of place that we expected girls to recommend, but we were not complaining! It was a great night and some massive shapes were thrown. Especially by JP.

Repeated photo but it captured the energy pretty well

With Scott feeling confident by all of his new found attention, and being fuelled heavily by vodka, he was curious about just how far he could go and began talking to one of the dancer/stripper girls.

The answer that he discovered quite quickly, was, unsurprisingly, not anywhere near as far as her.

Following that we made our way back to the hotel at 4am and got some rest before leaving for Sheremetyevo at midday.

The girls picked up the team and accompanied them on the bus to the airport. The older members of the team seemed to be quite a bit chirpier than Scott and John after the big night. Scott was really struggling.

The boy can not handle his Vodka

Thanks to all of our translating/guiding entourage ie; Marina, Vera, Julia, Daria, Elina and Elen! It made things easier....... most of the time! Also to Anastasia and Armin for organising everything and inviting us, if you are having another one, we would love to come!

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Moscow - Monday/Tuesday

So after our extremely good breakfast, we made our way to our rooms for some much needed sleep as it had felt that we had been awake for a week.

This was around 7am Russian time and we were required to be in the Red Square for some lunch at 1pm. It was Greig, Colin, Scott and John's first experience of Russia and the seriously impressive Red Square. The Russians have made a pretty solid effort of lighting the place up night. Well done.

Big screen showing the action during the opening game

During the lunch, the team discovered that if you are a pale, skinny, ginger looking kind of kid, Russia is the place to go if you want some female attention. For whatever reason, over the course of the flight, Scott had turned into some kind of Russian sex icon. There is no explanation.

This was in no danger of melting

After lunch we went for a walk through the very expensive shopping centre next to the Red Square. We kept our wallets firmly in our pockets on this one. It looked cool though.

We were supposed to have three 6 end game throughout the group stages of the tournament, but due to the temperature being a manhood shrinkingly cold -20 degrees, the ice was very brittle. It was decided that the opening game would only be for the cameras as there were quite a lot of craters on the pretty textured ice surface.

The media attention for the opening ceremony and first game was immense, there were about 40 photographers and several television cameras. A politician that was described as 'the John McCain of Russia' performed a very inspiring sounding speech which led to him being hounded by the paparazzi.

Russian TV screenshot from the opening ceremony. No idea what the subtitles say. 

There were a lot of people watching. More than you would expect to come to the final stages of a Scottish Championship, so it was a good atmosphere to be part of!

We were not actually told this, but I think our opening exhibition game was broadcast live on Russian TV. Which is not great, as the amount of shots we were able to make was even less than normal!

John was interviewed during the game. His words of wisdom are completely dubbed over, but if you are proficient in Russian, you can view it HERE. His piece starts 39 seconds in and lasts for around 10 seconds, which is longer than usual apparently.

After the exhibition game, we had a wee walk to a much more affordable shopping centre where we picked up some beer. Our guides encouraged Scott to pay for the beer, as they were certain that he would get ID'd for looking like a child. But it was 1-0 to Scott this time as he managed to slip through the net!

Practice

Back in the hotel, we played some cards with Gushue and De Cruz's team for a while and then called it a night to prep for the three 4 end games that were now planned for the following day.

This is how our games went!

Kirikov   00112 - 4
Edwards 11000 - 2

We were 2 up against Kerry Barr's nemesis, but the lead evaporated quite quickly. The game was taken to an extra where we were required to draw the 4ft for the win. A much more difficult shot than it sounds.

De Cruz 2220 - 6
Edwards 0004 - 4

Real bad to start with. Took a 4 in the last to at least make the score line look better.

Ali          1000 - 1
Edwards 0031 - 4

A nose hit for 3 turned into a really sweet double run back for 3 instead. You had to take what you can get.

This is how the table finished

The ice was as good as you could expect considering the conditions, and really, that was not why we were there!


So that left us 3rd in our section, just shy of the KO stages. That was the end of our curling commitments, and it was now time to socialise!

But that will come in another blog!

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Dumfries to Moscow!

A lot has happened over the last week, so it is going to have to be split up over several blogs or it will turn into a novel.

Before heading out to Moscow, we had the small matter of securing qualification for the Scottish Men's Championships down in Dumfries. The previous weekend had left us joint top of the standings with Kyle Smith on 3-0. Keen to avoid any tiebreakers, as we thought this would result in us missing our flights, we were looking to get early wins on the board. We had our bye on the Friday morning and were running into Kyle Smith in the evening. As this game was webcast on the Dumfries Curling youtube channel, I was really hoping the second half of the game was going to be uploaded, as Dave had a shot that was certainly worth watching again, but probably not if you were one of Kyle's team, one of their brushes, because it was quite a lucky shot. But unfortunately, it has not been, so you get a description instead!

We had a double for 4 which was a hair tight and rubbed a guard. At that point we thought we had given up a steal of 2 to go 4-2 down, but instead the stone clattered into a guard on the other side of the sheet only to be redirected onto the stone we were trying to hit initially. We all had to watch as both stones trickled to the back of the 12ft to an angry cacophony from Team Smith..... which was fair enough.

The footage from the first half of the game can be found HERE.

Half way through the game, all the lights in the ice rink switched off for about 10 minutes, which was a new experience!

We thought that the win was probably good enough for qualification but we had a game against Stuart Taylor on Saturday afternoon to seal the deal. When we arrived at the ice rink in Dumfries, Colin made an extremely sharp exit from the car bound for the changing rooms. When the rest of the team were walking through ice rink doors, they were met by a sprinting Colin Campbell exclaiming that he had left his curling stuff in his car, which he had left in Lockerbie. Spacker. With only half an hour before the start of the game, this was not ideal. Dave handed his car keys over to Colin so he could retrieve his curling gear, which I am not sure he would have done if it was Scott or John in this situation. We had Greig Henderson available to fill Colin's spot if he was not able to take to the ice, after a short team discussion, we decided that we would just take the penalty points.

Thankfully, Colin made it back in time to sweep Dave's draw shot challenge in the practice which picked and came up short of the hog line. Good work, Colin. We were not very sharp in this game and we had to make a nose hit for the win in the 10th end. We finished top of the table on 5-0 without having to play our last game which was nice, so for the third year in a row, we will be making an appearance at finals!

With a whole day before we thought we were flying, we decided to go out in Lockerbie for a few beers. The next morning we stuffed Dave's car to the brim before heading off to Edinburgh Airport, where we departed the Edwards household for the last time this season, which was, as always, great!

So we made our way up to Edinburgh with plenty of time in the bank careful not to miss our flight. Little did we know, we were in absolutely in no danger of missing it.

Copy of our ticket

The picture above shows a copy of the ticket that we were emailed. The sharp eyed among you may have noticed that the tickets are booked for the 19th December 2014. Not the 19th January, which was quite the error. We would like to state that it was not the team that booked the tickets, but I guess we probably should have checked! After a frantic hour trying to get alternative tickets booked via a Russian travel agency, we finally landed some. Unfortunately, the tickets couldn't be printed out, so we missed the flight by two minutes and were now onto option number 3!

Colin killing some time

To make option 3, we had to do a fair bit of running to get to the gate on time. We were successful and finally on our way!

During the flight from Charles de Gaulle and Sheremetyevo, Colin had a window seat and was trapped for the duration of the flight by an increasingly intoxicated and sexually aggressive Russian female with limited English. Obviously, the rest of the team picked up on his predicament and did not help him in the slightest. The lady was getting a bit touchy with Colin's lower regions at points which was quite clearly making him a bit concerned. For the team, and Scott especially, it was extremely hilarious to watch Colin have the most stressful flight you could imagine. She was a seriously intimidating Russian.

Surely the karma of laughing it up when Colin was receiving this unwanted attention would not come back to kick Scott in the nuts really hard? Like come back 100 times worse and over a much longer period of time? Nah......

When we arrived at the airport we got a bus out to the hotel which was the most phenomenally extravagant place we have ever stayed. We arrived so late that we were able to get breakfast before we went to bed. Thankfully it was included in the cost of the room as the price list was later discovered. With a standard breakfast coming in at £42, continental at £32, a glass of fruit juice at £12 and a coffee at £9, the 4 courses the team managed to fit in would have hit the bank account pretty hard. This was the best breakfast I have ever had. You could have steak in the morning. It was pretty sound.

So that got us to the hotel, another blog will follow soon!

Cheers
Team Edwards
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Scottish Qualifiers Weekend 1

Last weekend marked the start of the qualifying for the Scottish Championships. John was the driver this weekend and he picked up Scott and Dave on his way through Aberdeen at 7.30am!! Ridiculous. We met Colin in Braehead before our first game for the always new and exciting Umpire's Meeting.  

Our first game was against Hamish Lorrain-Smith. The ice was very good and curling a fair amount. Here is the line score.

Edwards          02030 32 X - 10 

Lorrain-Smith  00101 00 X - 2

We played pretty well and managed to get our first win on the board!

With having only one game on Saturday, we killed some time in Xscape which is next to Braehead. After getting stuck into some food, we ventured into the cinema to watch the critically acclaimed '12 Years a Slave'.

Here is some background and reviews of the film. 

The Observer - 'nothing short of magnificent'

The Guardian - 'a beautiful portrayal of one man's fight for freedom'

The Telegraph - 'truly important film, a must watch'

John Penny - 'What was that!? I can't believe I paid to see that, it was awful. So boring.'

So John went down a different route while reviewing this 5 star film that is favoured to win many Academy Awards. The emotional, situation building scenes within the film were the parts that JP was most critical about.

John Penny: "There was a guy just standing there sweating in a field for 5 minutes!! What was the point in that!?"

It would be fair to say it was not his cup of tea. 

The director of the movie was Steve McQueen. It appears that both Dave and Scott had a bit of a stupid moment after the film when questioning if the director was actually the star of 'The Great Escape'. Doing a bit of research, it appears that Steve McQueen, the actor, died in 1980. So it probably was not him. 

Wrong Steve McQueen

To cheer John up after this disaster of an evening for him, we let him have a wee go on some of the arcade games. Here is an action video that Colin captured of the team playing arcade basketball.

We were staying at the glamorous Glasgow Airport Holiday Inn Express for the night, so after our exploits in Xscape, we checked in, had a meal, had some beer and played some cards.

The next morning we were up against the always entertaining Graeme Black who actually managed to turn up for his game on this occasion. 

Edwards  11003 004 X - 9

Black      00200 010 X - 3

We played alright but they seemed to have quite a lot chances. 

The last game of the weekend was against John Hamilton. 

Edwards 00000 10104 - 6

Hamilton 00101 01010 - 4

As you can see from the line score, we didn't have a good first 9 ends. 2 down with in the 10th, we were hoping to take a 2 and hopefully steal in the extra. Our optimism of this happening dropped when Colin's first corner guard came up 2ft short of the hogline. By skip stones, we were lying really nicely, but Dave was required to play a nice hack weight tap back for the win!

This is how the table looks for us with 3 games still to go.    

Next weekend we will face Kyle Smith, Stuart Taylor and Graham Shedden down at Dumfries where we can hopefully do enough to qualify for Men's finals. Our first game against Kyle will be shown on the Dumfries Curling TV webcast at 8pm this Friday. The schedule can be found here and the coverage will be here.

On Monday evening, Curl Aberdeen was host to the massive Super League derby between David Edwards and John Penny. John has so far gone undefeated this season while David, with Scott, is a couple of games behind in third place. This massive Team Edwards duel was Dave and Scott's last real hope of catching JP.

This was the line up of the teams. 

Team Penny

Skip - John Penny

Third - Steven Eddie

Second - Andrew Dolman

Lead - Pye McLachlan

Team Edwards

Skip - David Edwards

Third - Scott Macleod

Second -Andy Mac

Lead - Ian Gove

And the linescore. 

Edwards 10020010 - 4

Penny     01101003 - 6

So the bad guys won this time, next season we will have them. 

Cheers 

Team Edwards

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Perth Masters 2014

On 2nd January, Team Hedge and Lawn Garden Services tried to haul their hungover and overweight carcasses out of their festive slumber to participate in the Perth Masters. The team had a quick practice before the first game so we would have some type of slide that would be acceptable for a World Curling Tour Event. As usual, Scott failed to do that.

In our first game we faced Tomi Rantamaki from Finland. It was tight but we managed to make use of the hammer in the final end to come out 4-3 winners.

The Calcutta auction followed the game against the Finns where we were purchased by the McCleary syndicate for £160. We did our best to get as much free food as we possibly could and invented a new meal combining oatcakes, curry and stovies. A Perth Masters Calcutta Classic.

Calcutta Mugshot

Next up was Shuuuuuuuuuuuster. They are the US Olympic reps and will be heading out to Sochi in February. This one was tight-ish but we secured a 6-4 victory.

Last year we ran into Niklas Edin from Sweden twice at the Masters and unbelievably managed to win both. Following our win against the USA, we were shot into the A semi against the reigning world champions where he would have the opportunity to get his revenge. This didn't happen and we won 6-1. We have now won 4 and lost 1 against the Swedish Olympians probably making us the worst team in the world to have that kind of record against them.

That was the last game on Friday and it was now time for the Masters dinner at City Mills. As the seating at this event is usually determined by who you played in your last game, we were at a table of 10 with Niklas Edin's team plus coaches. For any of you who do not know, Edin's coach is double Olympic champion, Eva Lund.

Eva Lund - This was not her reaction when she realised she was sitting next to Greig. 

Greig Henderson's eyes obviously lit up when he saw this and did a great job of manufacturing a coaches section at the table. The remaining members of Team Edwards got schooled into how to talk to women that night. It was actually quite impressive.

The Team Edwards female fan club, Team Kerry Barr, attended  the Perth Masters for the sole reason to support the boys, but they got distracted and decided to hit the bright lights of Perth. At the meal, John and Scott were receiving snapchats from their 'preparation stage' of the evening. The most notable one came from Rhiann's boyfriend, Andy Mac.

Fud

Rhiann was hospitalised that evening due to a wound sustained by crashing into a shelf in a nightclub. Thankfully, she didn't damage anything important, it was only a head injury.

Terry Butcher - Rhiann's idol.

So back to curling. We had a very bad Saturday by all accounts, which was, this time, not impacted by alcohol in the slightest.

In action against 1D and Glass Jaw

We first of all blew out in the A final with a very poor performance v Grant Hardie. It was much the same in the B semi against Oskar Eriksson and we were finally put out our misery by Pascal Hess in the C Road. Then it was home time!

Shout out to Tom Brydone who took all the pics that I have stolen. The rest of the pictures from the 2014 Perth Masters can be found here.

A Scottish Qualifiers blog will come soon!

Cheers
Team Edwards
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