Shinty: King of Kyles

Rugby reporter

Sunday 16 September 2012

The Tighnabruaich Ultras, gathered on the mound on the far side of the Mossfield Park pitch, had shouted themselves hoarse long before Roddy Macdonald lashed home Kyles Athletic's winning goal, his fourth of the afternoon, 12 minutes from the end, for a 6-5 victory over Inveraray in yesterday's Camanachd Cup final.

Kyles Athletic defeated Inveraray in an engrossing match in Oban Photograph: Mark Mainz

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Alasdair Reid

So the only thing to do was shout themselves hoarser still. It was not as if their tonsils were going to want for lubrication when they made their merry way back home last night.

This was a marvellous, febrile sporting occasion. "It must have been good to watch," said Macdonald at the end, blood still pouring from a hand wound but exultation clearly an effective painkiller. "In fact," he continued, "I almost wish I had been watching it myself."

It was a remark worthy of Father Dougal McGuire, Father Ted's surreal and stupid sidekick, but we kind of knew what he meant. And as Macdonald also had the Albert Smith medal, awarded to the man of the match, hanging round his neck, he was obviously not too distracted by the occasion. Macdonald was shinty's player of the year last season, but yesterday was the greatest day of his sporting life.And a great occasion on the Scottish sporting calendar as well. We might like to think of ourselves as the home of tennis these days, but the Camanachd Cup final is a marvellous advertisement for an indigenous national pastime. And while many finals of the recent past have been fraught and tense affairs, ancient Argyll rivalries gave this one a compelling edge right from the start.So, too, it has to be admitted, did some execrable defending. The Inveraray and Kyles attacks were of the hammer-and-tongs variety, but they were putting up chocolate fireguards at the other end of the pitch. At times, it was like watching basketball, as goals rattled in at an almost frenetic rate. Only towards the end did things start to ease off, the likeliest explanation for that development being that both sides were virtually dead on their feet by then. Their all-out commitment to attack and to seizing every opportunity would have given Craig Levein a fit of the vapours. From the moment they were piped on to the pitch by the Oban and Lorne Pipe Band – rather generous of them, as one stray shot in the warm-up had come dangerously close to wiping out one of the snare drummers – the two teams made it pretty clear that they would not be easing themselves into the fray.Shinty teams might traditionally represent parts of the world so remote that they don't even figure on the map used by the Rangers bus driver, but their passion for the contest was spine-tingling. To an observer raised on blood-and-thunder Border rugby derbies, this was a glorious spectacle. The shinty connoisseurs raised quizzical eyebrows at some of the tactics on display, but the lung-bursting commitment of all the players involved made their reservations irrelevant. Glenurquhart's less-than-tender care of the Macaulay Cup last month made a few headlines, but you suspect that Kyles will return shinty's most coveted trophy in one piece. Eighteen long years have gone by since they last got their hands on the thing, and they have suffered some heartbreaks along the way – none crueler than the 2009 final against Fort William, also held in Oban, when they fought back heroically from a 3-0 deficit to draw level at 3-3, only to concede another goal in the very last minute.They were never likely to repeat that lapse yesterday. With 54 minutes on the clock they still trailed Inveraray by two goals, 5-3, but they girded themselves for a series of stunning assaults in their opponents' half and the Kyles supporters began to sense that victory would be theirs.In every sense. Most sports build walls between fans and players, but none exist in shinty. The Kyles collection of farmers, joiners, firemen and labourers were roared on to victory by their friends and neighbours and workmates. And the roaring probably isn't over yet. In a little village on the Kyles of Bute they have a team of local heroes who really are worth shouting about.

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Shinty: King of Kyles

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