Wednesday 28 September 2011

Oslo Cup

We competed our first of the Champions Tour event of the season in Oslo on 22-25 October. The event was held in the Snaroya Ice Hall in somepart of Oslo. John, Scott and Colin heading out on the Wednesday via Amsterdam with Greig and David coming out on Thursday via Stavanger.

We had two short practice sessions in Oslo before the tournament started on the Wednesday night and the Thursday morning along with a lot of other foreign teams. Dave and Greig missed both of these because of their flight times.

Our first game of the weekend was against Kalle Kiiskinen of Finland. The skip was part of the Finnish Olympic team who won Silver in the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. So he is pretty decent. It was a scrappy game with us giving up a steal of 2 in the 3rd end. We took a 2 in the 6th end and with Kiiskinen flashing an open hit for a blank the 7th, things it started to go quite well. With us 1 up without in the 8th end, Kiiskinen had a difficult hit for 2. After a measure, it ended up with Kiiskinen scoring a 1 and the game going to an extra end. We managed to keep it clear in the final end and took a straightforward point in the extra for the win.

Game No.2 was against Niklas Edin of Sweden. This was going to be a big game. They were favourites to go through top in our group and are one of the best teams in the world. We were forced to 1 in the first end and were extremely lucky for Edin to only score 1 in the second when it was looking like we were going to lose a big end. We had a tough shot in the 3rd for 4 but unfortunately only got 1. Solid 4th end that lead to Edin trying a ridicous runback to prevent losing a 2, which he missed. We then exchanged 2's and played a pretty poor 7th end that gave Edin a difficult double for 3. He missed and conceded the game. A very good game to win early in our season.

For the 3rd game we were on a wild sheet of ice against Thomas Lovold of Norway. Everybody struggled with draw weight in the early stages of the game, but we took a 4 and manged to keep it comfortable until the end.

Last group game was against Bartsch from Hamburg. We ran out to a 6-0 lead after 3 ends and won the game 8-2. Poor ice again but was an alright performance for our only game on the Saturday.

With our team draw shot result of 38cm, we were ranked No.1 of the group winners. We went back to the hotel and let all the teams slog it out in the playoff games to see who we would have in the Quarter Finals.

It turned out we would be playing Tom Brewster. He did quite well last year so we thought it was probably going to be a tough game. It was. We didnt do anything ridiculously bad, we had a few opportunities, but we didnt really take them. They played well and deserved the win. Team Brewster ended up losing the final against Niklas Edin. Because we beat the winners, I am sure that makes us the best somehow? Right? Oh well, it was good. 8000 NOK in the bank.

Much needed money for the European Mixed Curling Championships in Copenhagen which Dave, myself, Kerry Barr and Louise Edwards will be attending next week.

Our next event as a team will be in Champery, Switzerland in the middle of October.

Have a good day,
Team Edwards

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Summer Training

The blog has had a massive layoff over the summer months. This has been in part due to my laziness, as well as it being the summer, therefore not too much happening on the curling front. Despite this, we have still been training hard on and off the ice.

On ice sessions have taken place in Kilmarnock, Stirling and Greenacres throughout the back end on of the summer racking up massive fuel bills and repair costs for our vehicles. Our new tops for the season got their first outing at the Greenacres Training week which can be read about and viewed here http://skipcottagecurling.blogspot.com/2011/08/world-class-insight.html. We were there for a total of 5 days. Throughout the time we were doing some sweeping training, learning what weight control was and just some other technical stuff to make us amazing. We were able to put this into practice in a couple of bounce games against Team Murdoch and Team Gray. In the first game against Murdoch, we started very well by stealing a 4. Unfortunately, that was as far as our dominance went as we ended up losing the game quite comfortably. We were missing Colin for our second game as he was tutoring the up and coming Brewster rink from Aberdeen at the CCT event in Baden. Colin did well and lost the final to Sven Michel from the Alps. While he was away gallivanting in Switzerland, the rest of us with, the addition of Billy Morton, had the practice game against Logan Gray. This was a better game for us and we ran out 5-0 winners I think.

With the season about to actually start, our first competition as a team is the Oslo Cup which runs 23-25 September. I am struggling to remember who we have to play , but I think it includes Niklas Edin, Thomas Lovold, a German team and a Finnish team. Lead, Second and Third are flying out on the Wednesday before the tournament via Amsterdam, Schipol. The Skip and Coach are flying out the day after via Stavanger. This has reminded me that we now have a coach.

Greig Henderson has agreed to be our coach for the season which we are all very pleased about. Soren Gran told us he owed a favour to the Hendersons as part of the deal in seccuring Greig for the coaching post on Team Edwards. A curling session with Soren will be auctioned off at the Aberdeen Ladies Invitational this year. We appreciate the sacrifice you have made for us, Soren.

In other good news, we are now attending the Champions Curling Tour event in Champery this year. We are happy to have opportunity to earn a few thousand CHF. This weekend will also be good preparation for the European Playoffs that follow this competition.

I will attempt to update this more regularly from now on.

Have a good day,
Team Edwards