The invitation from the organisers of a shinty and hurling contest went out with an unusual warning to new competitors – speak in English during the match and you will be sent off.

The event, which takes place today on the traditionally Gaelic-speaking Skye, has been opened up for the first time to include a team from Northern Ireland.

Although Northern Ireland are newcomers, the team will have to abide by the same strict language code as applies to Scottish and Irish squads, representing communities where Gaelic is, or has been, the mother tongue.

Eoghan Stewart, a Gaelic teacher in Edinburgh who plays for Lewis Camanachd, co-ordinated today's encounters known as the Iomain Cholmcille, and will manage the Scottish (Alba) select.

He said: "We only have one rule and that is that players speak Gaelic while training and playing.

"In fact, we have a rule that the referee can send a player off for not speaking Gaelic."

He added the event definitely gave confidence to those who might not speak the language –"and of course there are the post-match cultural exchanges as well".

Today's events in Portree are sponsored by Colmcille, a partnership programme between Gaelic language bodies in Ireland and Scotland – Foras na Gaeilge and Bord na Gaidhlig.

Mr Stewart said that for the first time there would be two teams representing shinty, Alba and a representative Skye team, and two from hurling, Micheal Breathnach from Galway and a team from across all nine counties that historically made up Ulster before the partition of Ireland.

"This fulfils a long-term aim of Colmcille that Northern Ireland be part of the project," Mr Stewart said.

This had been a long-term goal because the roots of the event go back to Mary Robinson's visit to Scotland in 1997, shortly before she stepped down as Irish president.

She had come to mark the 1400th anniversary of the death of St Columba.

Mrs Robinson, who visited Iona, said at the time Ireland could learn from Scotland.

Scottish Gaelic had never become the preserve of one religion, or one political movement, but in Ireland it had been identified with Catholicism and nationalism.

Mrs Robinson said this "... has had the effect of inhibiting those of the Protestant and Unionist tradition from claiming part of their inheritance".

She and Brian Wilson, then Scottish Office Minister in charge of Gaelic, launched Iomairt Chaluim Chille, the Columba Initiative.

It was to build on the shared Gaelic heritage of Scotland and Ireland, in the arts, in educational initiatives, and through programmes of exchanges between the two Gaelic- speaking communities.

It was under this banner of its successor Colmcille that Gaelic-only shinty/hurling developed.

The former MP said he was delighted it is still working.

Mr Wilson said: "Shinty- hurling was one of the few connections between Gaelic Scotland and Ireland which survived during the 1970s, when things were really bad in the North, along with reciprocal visits by groups of poets that the Scottish Arts Council sponsored. It was very important at the time that these contacts were maintained and could then be developed into the much wider links we have today.

"Once the barriers of religion and politics are removed, there is so much these communities have in common from the Butt of Lewis down to the Ring of Kerry – the Gaelic continuum. Iomain Cholmchille is a great way of giving status to speakers of the language and placing it in a wider context."