Mens Qualifiers

 We made it through to Scottish Mens Finals! The group is shown below.

We did not have the most convincing of qualifications. It was pretty ropey at times.

A picture of some rope.

I will now give you all a 2 sentence summary of each game.

Lose - Graeme Black 3-6

Graeme played a lot of shots and we did not. By far our worst game of the qualifiers.

The Bye

We went on a team date to watch Sherlock Holmes. Very romantic.

Win - Alan Manuel 9-3

We also did not play very well. Won it without too many issues.

Lose - Logan Gray 4-6

This was a really good game. Unfortunately for us Logan was being a bit of a dick and kept making ridiculous shots.

Win - Alan Gillies 6-5

We were toiling for a while. Had to make a wee bit of a comeback.

Win - Dave Hay 10-3

We could have quite easily been 5-0 down after the first 2 ends. Mr Edwards was on form, so it was all good.

Lose - Ally Fraser 4-5

Played really well, but it was a defensive game, so it was tight until the end. Had the 4ft for the win, and missed.

Win – Graeme Shedden 9-0

Was not a classic from Shedden. We stole quite a lot of ends.

Win – Bruce Mouat 8-2

Took a 3 in the first. I had some fun peeling following that.

This left us on a 6-3 record. Because all the other results went our way, we got through without any tie breakers! It looked like we could have been there for weeks if we had lost the last one. There was a possibility of a 5 way tiebreaker for one spot.

The draw for the Mens Finals is now out.

http://royalcaledoniancurlingclub.org/competitions/scottish-mens-championship/

This is how it looks for us.

13^th Feb 4.15pm MacDonald

14^th Feb 8.00am McWilliam

14^th Feb 4.00pm Murdoch

15^th Feb 12noon Black

15^th Feb 8.00pm Smith

16^th Feb 12noon Young

16^th Feb  8.00pm Gray

17^th Feb  8.00am Hamilton

17^th Feb  4.00pm Brewster

The 8pm game followed by an 8am game is going to be pretty rough. I am sure we will manage though.

That’s it.

Cheers

Team Edwards

Perth Masters

 Here is what happened at the Masters

First game was against Tsoulesov from Russia. He was amazing at blanking so it was a very tight game until the 5^th end. He went mental in the 6^th and tapped us up for a steal of two. We won.

A rare time when we had stones in play

Following this was the Calcutta. We fancied buying ourselves but someone else was determined to get us. We sold for £190 in the end.  

Next up was Laycock from Saskatchewan. They are a pretty good team. It was tight the whole way and it went to an extra. They hogged a few guards so we had a pretty simple shot for the win.

Chasing John's Peel

We had Brewster in the A semi. I think he had received a bit of coaching from the Russian we played earlier. It was an insanely boring game until we open freshed, and lost a 2. Following that, we didn’t make very many shots and ended up getting beaten 5-0.

We then played Sandy Reid. It was a pretty good game for a while. We had a few chances that didn’t come off, especially in the 4^th end. So in the 5^th end, we decided we really wanted a 2. What we actually did was give up a steal of 3. Hello C Road.

Team Edwards Hairline

Next was Pascal Hess from Switzerland. We played really well at the start of the game and had a few chances that did not get us anything.  We were 3-1 down in the 4^th.  We took our 2 in the 5^th, then forced 1, then scraped together a 3 and then didn’t lose a 2 in the 8^th. So we won.

We played Kyle Smith’s team of children for a place in the C final. We were 3-0 up after the first couple of ends. We had a pretty awful pick/burn combo that ended with us losing a very unjustified 3. After that, they played really good and we played bad. So we lost and were out.

Giving it the guns.

Conclusion of the weekend.

We are amazing at playing foreign people. Not so good against Scottish. Sooooooooooooo, as of tomorrow we are starting the Qualifying for the Scottish Finals, this will be mostly against Scottish teams. First up is Mr. Graeme Black at 12.45pm Saturday. On Sunday we have Alan Manuel first and the Logan Gray at 8.00pm.

I am very keen to be playing Mens Finals this year, so, once again, wish us luck!

Love

Team Edwards

Follow us on Twitter at the links below.

https://twitter.com/#!/TeamDEdwards

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Season Update, Perth Masters

SEASON UPDATE!!

We have completely abandoned the blog recently. I will restart it now in time for the business end of the season.

I will begin with an update with what has happened throughout the hiatus.

CHAMPERY

Champery is a cool place. It is a very small skiing town high up in Switzerland near the French border. It was about an hour and a half drive around Lake Geneva from the airport, most of it on a very steep small winding road.

The competition took place in the arena where the 2010 European Championships were held. It had big swing.

Our section contained Pescia, Kirikov, Sik and Edin. We beat Pescia, lost a bad one to Kirikov, won relatively pain free against Sik then had a tight one against Edin, which we lost. This left us on 2-2, that tied us for 2^nd place with Pescia. We had a better draw shot than him so we were through to the tiebreakers.  In our first game we played Ulsrud, which we won by taking a 4 in the 6^th end.  It ended 7-2 if my memory serves me correctly. Next up was De Cruz for a place in the Quarters. We got absolutely raped. Lost a 3 in the first then gave up a steal of 4 in the second. Game Over, Competition Over. De Cruz ended up winning competition beating Brewster in the final.

EUROPEAN PLAYOFFS

Next up were the Euro Playoffs in Perth.

The format was a four team double round robin to decide the two qualifiers in a best of three final.

This was how the first four games went

Brewster – Lose

Murdoch – Lose

Reid – Lose

Brewster- Lose

You would be forgiven for thinking that at this point, we were fucked.  We managed to win our last two RR games against Reid and Murdoch. This led to the table looking like this.

Brewster 6-0

Murdoch 2-4

Edwards 2-4

Reid 2-4

Very lucky. We were ranked 2^nd out of the teams tied on 2-4. We played Reid in our first and won. This meant we played Murdoch for a place in the final. It was a tight game and we had a few opportunities at the start. We had a bad end in the 6^th/7^th? and we were required to make a freeze to not give up 3. We came up short, lost the 3 and the game.

Murdoch played Brewster in the best of three final. Murdoch won. Stinger.

Dave got to go with Murdoch to Russia as 5^th man. The ice was really good for the weekend in Perth. Hopefully more of the same over the coming months!

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL

At the end of November we played the International at Murrayfield Ice Rink. We were given a bit of a tough group. It included David Murdoch, David Hay, Jiri Snitil, Jan Hauser and Graeme Shedden. We played well and managed to win them all to come through top. This meant we played Logan Gray in the Quarter Final on the Sunday morning. They played well and we lost a very bad 3 early, this put us on the back foot for the rest of the game. We clawed it back a bit and made Logan draw the 8ft for the win. I cant remember all of the results following that but Tom Brewster beat Sandy Reid in the final.

We had a month free of competitions in December. Dave was away in Russia for most of it, but we all met up in Curl Aberdeen for a day of team practices. We are really good at curling now.  

The first half of the season was good. We had a bit of a jet set life travelling across Europe to Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. But now we get to curl in Perth all the time. Very exotic.

Next up is the Mercure Perth Masters.  We play our first game on Thursday 5^th January against Alexey Tselousov from Russia. If you are feeling a bit flush with cash you can come and buy us in the Calcutta on the Thursday Evening.

Here is the link to the draw.

http://www.perthmasters.com/draw.html   

Following this we have two weekends of Qualifiers for the Scottish Championships. If all goes well there we then have Scottish Finals in the middle of February for the right to represent Scotland at the World Championships in April.

Wish us luck.

Cheers

Team Edwards