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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