Shinty
Shinty (also shinny , shinney , Scottish Gaelic camanachd ) is an old Celtic sport from Scotland , which is played with sticks and a ball and is considered a forerunner of hockey and ice hockey .
The game
The aim of the game is to get a small ball into a goal (or hail ) at the end of a 120 to 160 yard long field. The ball is played with the caman , a club about one meter long.
A team consists of twelve players: a goalkeeper, two defenders and nine attackers. The game is played in two halves of 45 minutes each. Apart from the goalkeeper, no player may play the ball by hand.
history
Shinty has its origins in hurling , which was brought to Scotland by Gaelic settlers from Ireland , and bandy . Hurling was played in Scotland until the 14th century, but with a different type of bat.
Nowadays Shinty is played almost exclusively in the Scottish Highlands , but it used to be common in the Lowlands as well, there under the names common / cammon ( caman ), cammock (after the Scottish Gaelic camag ), knotty and many others.
Today the sport is organized by the Camanachd Association (Comunn na Camanachd).
distribution
Scotland
There are several leagues, the top two at national level, but the more important competition is the Scottish Cup or Camanachd Association Challenge Cup , or Camanachd Cup for short .
This one has been dominated by Kingussie for the past twenty years . Another important club is Newtonmore, right by Kingussie. Interestingly, these two clubs first met in the Cup in 1984. In 2004 there was the rare case that neither Kingussie nor Newtonmore were in the final of the Camanachd Cup, but Inveraray and Fort William . Inveraray won 1-0.
Almost every major university in Scotland has a team. The teams from Glasgow and Edinburgh dominated until a few years ago, but in recent years Robert Gordon University and Dundee Universities have also gained prominence in the battle for the Littlejohn Vase .
Worldwide
Shinty exists worldwide in different versions and names. The Canadian type of game brought to the small village of Windsor in Nova Scotia by Scottish settlers is still often referred to there as Shinney .
