War of the Thistles 2008 Report

→ Photo Galleries → Globe video from WOTT 08

We all knew that the weekend was going to go off (or at least we hoped that it would after all the ball ache that we put into sorting it out). It did not disappoint at all. The Skateboard Scotland minibus was hired and all primed to go up the road at 9.30 on the Saturday morning. Then as usual we had to wait for Nasty P to get into the van from his flat. This meant we left later than intended (Or Ali time as Neil calls it). Anyway, we made it up the road quickly and got all the banners up at the park.

At this point I am going to make a moment to thank all our sponsors of the event. Without them none of this would of went down:

Globe the main cash sponsor of the event. These guys are the bomb and even sent part of their euro team along with Sam Becket across to session over the weekend. Greg, Xian, Florien, Simon and Jarnne were all sound as hell and brought some bowl riding skills with them. Xian had a crazy style and his unable to speak English communication style was rad.
Oakley for always supporting the War series and once again coming up with the goods Cheers Jeremy.
Relentless and Bawbags for bringing the rest of the cash to the table. I’m glad the bawbags product eventually arrived too as we were all getting bored listening to Bob saying where’s ma bawbags!
Skateboard Scotland for putting in the donation for the Schralpher award (doing all those little events paid off in the end) and Daryl Smith for making the Sickest Trophy yet. At this point I must not forget to thank all the members of the Skateboard Scotland board that helped with the planning of the event, putting up all the banners, updating the website and other general help during the course of the year. Big props. If it was not for the whole board events like this would not happen. They help support Scottish Skateboarding and raise the funds needed through running local events throughout the year.
Sidewalk for repping the event to the max as usual.

Unit 23 Skatepark and Transition Extreme skatepark – The two venues for being the great hosts as usual.

And the rest of the sponsors who gave us all the product to give out to the kids and rippers, Big Props to:

A Third Foot
Blueprint
Heathen
Unabomber
Black Label
Independent
Eastpack
Spitfire
Death
Plan B
Expedition 1
Cliche
Medic
Volcom
Carhartt
Karma
The Harmony
Howies
Zero (cheers Mr Rattray for the last minute goodie bag)

Thanks over you will be glad to know. Here is how it went down:

Transition Extreme – Aberdeen: Saturday

We kicked off the day with the usual shoe sample size miniramp Jam. Giving away shoes at comps is always hard work and a bit of a pain. Some locals rippers fleeced me for the globes pretty quickly though. I also had a pair of white D3s to give away courtesy of Mr Rattery. An amazing retro prize which was awarded to the little Welsh killcity ripper Jake.

Next up was the try and give product away to kids for making tricks over the pyramid. This proved to be pretty tough as all the kids were trying to land their hardest tricks. The usual carnage snake fest went down. No-one got hurt and me and Bob ended up deciding that the best way to give out the product was just to toss it out to all the waiting kids. This was definitely easier for us. There was some pretty stoked kids with all that proddie getting tossed out.

The half pipe for cash kicked off. There was some silly skating going on. Aaron Sweeney was doing nice tweaked airs out of the oververt as well as a backy d and rolling into. Benson was flying about and re-verting left, right and centre. Awahd did a ridiculous late shuv-it. Check out the Sidewalk footage shot by Ry for the rest of it.
Next up was the Street section for cash. The session also went off with Gavin doing a massive wallie over the fun box. Chris Vile also made a switch tre flip and backside 360 flip going with it. Once again Sweeney came along and ripped the arse out of it with a massive kickflip transfer across all the fun boxes, mental!!

Then onto the finale that was the bowl jam. The Adams brothers were killing the bowl as usual. Some of the runs that Colin pulled out were just silly with lovely inverts and the stupid boneless that I’m sure that you have all seen by now. Always amazes me how quick these filmers can get their footage up on tinternet nowadays. Woody made a nice frontside nose grind and big airs over the hips. But once again Sweeney took the biscuit with never ending runs that got harder and harder. I’d list the tricks that he made but once again the footage tells the story better than I can. For his efforts over the course of the day Skateboard Scotland awarded him the Schralpher award and 150 extra quid for his troubles.

The first day went down a treat and everyone went out for a booze up to celebrate. Not really many good stories to tell apart from the one about benson and the hen party. Say no more apart from ‘Livi ya Bas’. After retiring/passing out at 4.30 in the morning I was most surprised when everyone riding the minibus managed to be up and ready to go by the 10 o’clock time that we had arranged the night before. On to the three hour road to Dumbarton.

Day 2: Unit 23 – Dumbarton – Sunday

As everyone knows Chick kindly decided to spend a fortune building a ridiculous massive new bowl at the park. It is an amazing thing to try and skate, although it was easily mastered by the likes of Div and Benson very quickly.

We had a hoarse Sanderson with us on the Sunday so I ended up MCing a most of the day with a mic that kept cutting out followed by a transfer to ye olde Megaphone. The session kicked off on the silly rails and blocks. Neil Smith ruled this section and eventually managed to nail a massive feeble and earn himself 50 quid. Euro man Mac managed to 50-50 the kinked bar too that was well sick.

We had a wee fun box sesh to give some of the fine product away. This went a lot better than the day before as kids were managing to make some tricks and earn themselves some prizes. Next up for giving away the product was a wee bowl session. This went off nicely and the product was given away followed by the rest of the product getting tossed into the bowl for the kids to fight over. Gavin even managed to bigspin flip for a pair of Oakleys.

Once the product was out of the way we moved on in true livi style to have a ‘wee bowl, big bowl’ session. Most of the skating seemed to be going on in the bowls so this is where the cash was given out. Ben Layden was ripping up the wee bowl and earned himself quite a few tenners. The Welsh contingency skated the wee bowl really well. Porno Paul made a frontside flip to tail followed by a backside flip to tail in the same run. Andy Scott had a nice run too ending with a nice big flip. Div was flying round and made to silly gap as usual. There was a nice few slams as everyone was desperate to get into the bowl and snake each other up. Very good viewing.

Everyone knew the big bowl session was not going to disappoint. It did not. Andy Scott Backside T’d and frontside disastered the massive vert wall. Woody frontside nosegrinded nicely. Mark Murray was flying about the place with a nice style. Benson was making massive stalefishes and a crazy frontside wall ride transfer. Div was ridiculous, he mayday’d, backside t’d and backside smith’d the large vert wall. He looked at such ease flying around the bowl and his skills managed to earn him the second half of the Schralpher trophy along with 150 quid for his troubles. Well done Div.

Skateboard Scotland contributed 600 quid towards the Schralpher prize fund this year. As well as the cash prizes for the Schralpher trophies, three skaters were awarded 100 pound handshakes on the Sunday for getting to both days and skating hard. These bonuses were given to Benson, Andy Scott and Woody for their efforts over the weekend.

Here are the overall results from over the weekend:

Shralpher in Aberdeen:
Aaron Sweeney

Shralpher in Dumbarton:
Div Adams

Shralpher awards:
Benson
Andy Scott
Woody

I know that this report is missing a lot of stuff that went on over the weekend. Unfortunately writing up events is hard work and I have had enough. So if you want a more detailed idea of what went on then I suggest that in future you don’t forget to get to the event. Bring on 2009.