“Hogmanay shinty on the beach, 12noon.” the sign in the post office said. “Bring a stick!”
And they did. There was a bumper turnout this year on the cold sands of Ardalanish Bay - around 50 people at the peak, with about 40 people (and dogs) taking to the pitch for the frenzied battle.
The rules of Ardalanish shinty are simple:
1. Bring a stick. Or a golf club. Or an umbrella. Or a plank. Or a lethal-looking metal device for dipping sheep. Or….anything else which is vagely stick-like and can be used to whack the ball.
2. Nowhere is out of bounds: The pitch has no edges, except a) the sea and b) the fire.
3. You must score goals through the posts (which may occasionally move).
4. Don’t wave your stick in the air and most importantly…
5. Mind your shins.
It was decreed after seven matches that the blue team had snuck ahead by a whisker to take the champions cup. The yellow team graciously accepted the runners-up prize.
These photos are from the day. The pictures are hosted on Flickr, a photo sharing website. You can see the whole set by clicking here (or see a slideshow version), or click on any of the images below to see the relevant picture’s page on Flickr, where you can also leave comments. If you can add any information about people in the photos, please do!
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(Photos of last year’s match are here, by the way….) |
These images were taken on Ardalanish Beach, on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, on January 1 2008. If you want full-size copies, please get in contact. meish.org is the personal site of Meg Pickard, whose mum lives on the Ross of Mull.
[…] What I surfed Given that I’ve been away, a lot of my normal surfing patterns were disrupted, and so any surfing fell into two distinct classes: Maintenance (which included Gmail, Twitter, Netvibes and Flickr) and Random Weird Shit (which included ebay searching for sonic mouse deterrents for a friend of mum’s, Nestoria property porn and the official rules of shinty). When I could (and it wasn’t often) I used my phone to keep up with twitter and gmail. I used the web to create, though - both within flickr and for the local community on Mull following the annual Hogmanay Shinty on the beach shenanigans. […]