| Shinty,
(Scottish Gaelic camanachd or iomain), is a team sport played
with sticks and a ball. Shinty is now played almost exclusively
in the Scottish Highlands, but it was formerly more widespread,
especially in England.
The sport was derived
from the same root as the Irish game, hurling and is similar to
bandy.
Shinty is one of the forebears
of ice hockey, Scottish immigrants to Nova Scotia playing a game
on ice in 1800 at Windsor. In Canada, informal hockey games are
still called shinny.
In the Scottish Lowlands,
it was formerly referred to as common/cammon (caman), cammock (from
Scottish Gaelic camag), knotty and various other names.
Game
The objective of the game is to play a small ball into a goal, or "hail",
erected at the ends of a 120 to 160-yard-long pitch. The ball is played using
the caman, a stick of about 3 1/2 ft in length. Unlike the Irish camán,
it has no blade. The caman is traditionally made of wood and must not have
any plate or metal attached to it.
A team consists
of 12 players, including one goalkeeper. A match is played over
two halves of 45 minutes. With the exception of the keeper, no
player is allowed to play the ball with his hands. There are also
variants with smaller sides, with some adjustments in the field
size and duration of play.
Whilst comparisons
are often made with field hockey, the two sports have several important
differences. In shinty, a player is allowed to play the ball in
the air and is allowed to use both sides of the stick. The stick
may also be used to block and to tackle, although a player may
not come down on an opponent's stick, this is defined as hacking.
A player may tackle using the body as long as this is shoulder-to-shoulder
as in football.
A player may
only stop the ball with the stick, two feet together or one foot
planted on the ground. Only the goalkeeper may use his hands and
then only with an open palm. He may not catch it. Playing the ball
with the head constitutes a foul whether intentional or not.
Fouls result
in a free-hit, which is indirect unless the foul is committed in
the penalty area, commonly referred to as "The D". This
results in a penalty hit from 20 yards.
History
Gaelic settlers from Ireland brought the sport of hurling to Scotland, where
the game was played as such until the 14th century, albeit with a different
caman from the Irish one. Shinty appears prominently in the legend of Cu
Chullain, the Celtic mythology hero.
The modern sport
is governed by the Camanachd Association (Scots Gaelic:Comann na
Camanachd). The association came into being in the late victorian
era in as a means of formulating common rules to unite the various
different codes and rules which even differed between neighbouring
glens, in this the sport shares similarities with other sports
which became organised around this time. The first meeting of the
Camanachd Association was held in Kingussie in 1893.
In 1887, a historic
game was played between Glenurquhart Shinty Club and Strathglass
Shinty Club in Inverness. This game was attended by thousands of
people and was a major milestone in developing a set of common
rules. This fixture is to be repeated on 12th January 2007 in Inverness
as the opening centrepiece of the Highland 2007 celebrations in
Scotland.
The game was
traditionally played through the winter months, with New Year's
Day being the day when whole villages would gather together to
play games featuring teams of up to 80 a side.
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