The draw has just been made:
Group A
Inverness Caledonian Thistle
Elgin City 1 (defending champions)
Huntly
Forres Mechanics
Moray Firth Radio
Fraserburgh Locos
Clachnacuddin 2

Huntly Squad:
1) Martin Rough
2) Ross McNeill
3) Grant Turner
4) Grant's call-up (will be edited in no doubt)
5) David Moore (Capt)
6) Andrew Hassan
7) Darren Shallicker
8) Shaun Rough
9) Darren (shauns mate)
10) Kevin Garioch * TBC

The top 3 in the group go through to the Super Bowl Finals.
The remaining rubbish head into the notoriously bad Toilet Bowl competition to fight for the toilet bowl & wooden spoon.
Bus leaves Market Muir Car Park at 9.15am.

Huntly 1, Forres Mechanics 4
Believe it or not this was a case of the better team lost. The first few minutes was pretty even stuff – it soon became apparent that the refs had created a new rule whereby the opposition were allowed to kick Shallicker as often as they liked and not expect to get punished, but when Shally tried anything he was immediately pulled up. “come on ref, it’s not like we’re playing on the continent” was the remark I instantly remember, and he had a point!. Then they scored on the counter. Another soon followed, again on the counter.
Shally’s first real moment of brilliance happened mid-way through when he nut-megged Douglas Delaney. H.L Fan then saved a Shally free kick but couldn’t get near Huntly’s opener, again from Shally which was a good left-foot finish. But straight away Huntly conceded a third, and a lat substitution in the game opened space up for Forres to score a fourth.

Elgin City (A) 4, Huntly 0
A real disaster. No real surprise as it took a monumental performance to beat these guys, last year’s winners, later in the day but again we were all over the place when we made subs, never really gelled and they took full advantage. But given they are a team who play regularly (Bishopmill United in the Junior ranks) then just creating a few chances was a result!

Huntly 1, Inverness Caledonian Thistle 2
If we thought we should have done better in the first game, then we REALLY should have won this one. Ahead of this game, I’d said to Bhoy Wonder that I hoped Mike Ritchie wasn’t the ref as he gave Caley a last minute penalty at Ibrox last season. Naturally, guess who showed up to ref. There was a lot of fouling going on by them in this one. I got my first start in this in the centre mid, and within two minutes was shoved off the ball in the box. Ref decision? - throw-in! From that throw in, Shally was taken down, penalty given.
Shally put it away nicely and I think we all thought that this would set the ball rolling. It did, we should have had a second pen with about three minutes to play for a handball, but alas ‘play on’ was the decision. The old subs come on, things go wrong came back to haunt us yet again – they scored two in the final minute to leave us pointless with one to play.

Huntly 2, Moray Firth Radio 0
We were determined not to go down in this final match – as if we failed to win, the dreaded wooden spoon was ours! Despite being a bunch of trannie workers, these guys could clearly play a bit – and had Daniel Forde up front too as their HFL player.
Our early pressure resulted in yet another Shally goal, and you always sensed we’d score more. We did, and it was our best goal of the tournament when Colin Shanks, a now bit-part Rothes fan, dribbled around three MFR Players before perfecting his finish from outside the box into the top corner. Absolutely fantastic.

The Toilet Bowl:
Quarter-Final:
Lossiemouth (Shaker) 1, Huntly 2
Our third captain of the day, Grant Turner, won a toss which earned us a bye into quarter-finals where we faced old foes Lossie Shaker. Our unbeaten run against these clowns never really was in doubt, and if anything the way they started you’d think we had a psychological edge and they were running scared. Every time we broke forward we looked dangerous, obviously it was three on Shally from the kick-off but he still put two tidy finishes into the back of their net. I still remember Shakers reactions on the far touchline, now that would have been good HFL TV had they been covering this game of games.
For some reason someone decided I was the best candidate for the man-marking job on Dougie Coull in the closing stages of the game, I’m still waiting for reasoning on this – but it was evident that he’d been prompted that I was nursing a knock from Monday night and his first act was arm into my ribs. I don’t think I did that badly to be honest, as I limited him to only the one shot. Somehow they scored near the end – their first goal versus us near the end of their third game but we held on and progressed.

Semi-Final:
Huntly 0, Clachnacuddin (B) 0
Clachnacuddin (B) won 4-3 on penalties
A pretty poor game from both sides to be honest, and I doubt Clach would disagree.
The main talking point came in the first attack of the match, when the clach full back clearly used his distal radius to fist the ball across the box, the ball bounced and Grant Turner picked it up with both hands shouting “handball” in the process, only for the ref to give handball AGAINST Turner.
I don’t think anyone could believe it at the time, and I still can’t now as it was a clear pen but it ended up being the funniest thing I’ve seen for a long time.
Shortly after Turner beat two clach defenders in the box into space, but instead of shooting from a tight angle opted to turn his back to goal and the ball ended up getting cleared.
As for the pens, well Macca and Shanksie missed for us, but we weren’t too bothered in the end as it had been a good day and we’d improved as we went on.
Toilet Bowl semi added to our C.Vs, can’t ask for more.

I have to say what a great day out that was on Sat. The boys did really well, maybe next year we can make it into the Super Quaich. Thanks to Shally for playing with us as well.

I've stuck a heap of photos up on one of my sites:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davermoore