Indoor Grand Match

Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 2:46pm

The club entered a team in the Indoor Grand Match which is held once every five years and was held this year on 23rd October 2010. The games were played in every Ice Centre in the country and Inverness were drawn to play against Midcalder in Ayr. The club was represented by George Sim, Margaret Hastie, Scott and John Barbour. Margaret, George and John had an early start at 7.30am on a cold morning and passed a couple of bad accidents, probably due to black ice, the first not far out of Inverness. Driving very carefully we heard on the radio at 10am that the A9 was closed in both directions behind us. We stopped off in Glasgow to pick up Scott and continued on our way arriving at the Ice rink at 12pm. We registered and found our bearings and were piped onto the ice at 1pm. After photos the games started at 1.15pm. We were drawn on sheet A which proved to be quite a challenge, with large swings on one hand and fall backs on the other. The ice was very fast, but we soon had that mastered, unfortunately for us so did Midcalder. By the end of the fourth end, when we stacked brooms and stopped for “Clyde Steamers”, we had not managed to get a shot on the board. However, nothing daunted, we played on and eventually finished the game 9-5 down. Not a score to be proud of, but we didn’t play that badly. We had a meal after the game and Midcalder were good company so we had a very pleasant day out. We left at 6.30pm, dropped Scott off in Glasgow, stopped in Perth for a quick snack and we were all safely home by midnight.