Ice hockey in Scotland | |
---|---|
Country | Scotland |
Governing body | Scottish Ice Hockey |
National team(s) | Men's national team; Women's national team |
National competitions | |
Ice hockey is the most popular indoor sport in Scotland, with a fairly established presence in each of the population centres and a spectator attendance lower only than football and rugby union. [1] [2] [3] The term "hockey" is usually reserved for field hockey in Scotland, and "ice hockey" is normally referred to by its full form. [4]
As with curling (a sport of Scottish origin), the game tends to be more commonly played indoors these days, due to milder winters in the past few decades. [5] Ice hockey is thus played on indoor rinks in Scotland, with the possible exception of street hockey, which is played at an informal level within the country. [6] [7]
The national governing body is Scottish Ice Hockey. [8]
Despite the official introduction of ice hockey into Scotland in the twentieth century, its roots in Scotland go far deeper. [9] To this day, ice hockey is often referred to as "shinny" and "hurtling" in Canada, suggesting a tie up with shinty and Ireland's hurling. Shinty is the national stick game of Scotland, and Phil Dracket who favours an English origin for the game, in the Fens of Cambridgeshire admits:
In fact, Charles Goodman Tebbutt, who wrote down the first English bandy rules, claimed the words were interchangeable:
However, the similarities between the two sports, post-codification are still notable:
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2013) |
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2013) |
Bandy is a winter sport and ball sport played by two teams wearing ice skates on a large ice surface while using sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team's goal.
Hockey is a term used to denote various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium.
Ice hockey is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance and shoot a closed, vulcanized, rubber disc called a "puck" into the other team's goal. Each goal is worth one point. The team which scores the most goals is declared the winner. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, one of whom is the goaltender. Ice hockey is a full contact sport.
Roller hockey is a form of hockey played on a dry surface using wheeled skates. It can be played with traditional roller skates or with inline skates and use either a ball or puck. Combined, roller hockey is played in nearly 60 countries worldwide.
A hockey puck is either an open or closed disk used in a variety of sports and games. There are designs made for use on an ice surface, such as in ice hockey, and others for the different variants of floor hockey which includes the wheeled skate variant of inline hockey. They are all designed to serve the same function a ball does in ball games.
Shinty is a team game played with sticks and a ball. Shinty is now played mainly in the Scottish Highlands and amongst Highland migrants to the big cities of Scotland, but it was formerly more widespread in Scotland, and was even played in northern England into the second half of the 20th century and other areas in the world where Scottish Highlanders migrated.
A face-off is the method used to begin and restart play after goals in some sports using sticks, primarily ice hockey, bandy, broomball, rinkball, and lacrosse.
Shinny is an informal type of hockey played on ice. It is also used as another term for street hockey. There are no formal rules or specific positions, and often, there are no goaltenders. The goal areas at each end may be marked by nets, or simply by objects, such as stones or blocks of snow. Body checking and lifting or "roofing/reefing/raising the puck" are often forbidden because the players are not wearing protective equipment. Shinny is a game that all levels of hockey enthusiasts can play because it requires no rink, requires no skills except ability to hold a stick and at the very least to try to touch the puck or ball when it goes by. Shinny may be completely non-competitive and recreational.
An ice rink is a frozen body of water and/or an artificial sheet of ice created using hardened chemicals where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Ice rinks are also used for exhibitions, contests and ice shows. The growth and increasing popularity of ice skating during the 1800s marked a rise in the deliberate construction of ice rinks in numerous areas of the world.
Floor hockey is a broad term for several indoor floor game codes which involve two teams using a stick and type of ball or disk. Disks are either open or closed but both designs are usually referred to as "pucks". These games are played either on foot or with wheeled skates. Variants typically reflect the style of ice hockey, field hockey, bandy or some other combination of sport. Games are commonly known by various names including cosom hockey, ball hockey, floorball, or simply floor hockey.
James George Aylwin Creighton was a Canadian lawyer, engineer, journalist and athlete. He is credited with organizing the first recorded indoor ice hockey match at Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1875. He helped popularize the sport in Montreal and later in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada after he moved to Ottawa in 1882 where he served for 48 years as the law clerk to the Senate of Canada.
Sport plays a central role in Scottish culture. The temperate, oceanic climate has played a key part in the evolution of sport in Scotland, with all-weather sports like association football and golf dominating the national sporting consciousness. However, many other sports are played in the country, with popularity varying between sports and between regions.
Ronald Ross, MBE is a retired Scottish shinty player who played for Kingussie Camanachd. He is a forward, the only man to have ever scored more than 1000 goals in the sport and who has broken several other records as an individual and as part of Kingussie's record-breaking first team.
Ice hockey has been played in the United Kingdom since the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was a game between English Army veterans played in Canada that is the first recorded use of a sawed-off ball, which led to the use of the puck in hockey. The Great Britain men's national ice hockey team enjoyed worldwide success through the 1920s and 1930s, achieving bronze at the 1924 Olympics, and gold twelve years later. They also won medals at the World Championships in 1935, 1937 and 1938, though never won the tournament. The national team has struggled since the Second World War, and has not finished better than twelfth in the World Championships since 1962. Ice hockey is played professionally in the United Kingdom in the Elite Ice Hockey League, a ten team league which was founded in 2003.
Rinkball is a winter team sport played on ice with ice skates and is most popular in Finland, where it is known as kaukalopallo. This ball sport originated in Sweden in the 1960s and from there landed in Finland in the 1970s.
Iomain was a hybrid sport formed from shinty and hurling created in 2013.
The English Shinty Association (ESA) is the main body for promoting and encouraging the sport of shinty in England.
The Great Britain Bandy Association (GBBA) is the governing body of the sport of bandy in the United Kingdom. It is based in The Fens part of Cambridgeshire, East Anglia. Formerly, the federation was named Bandy Federation of England. After some years with less activity, the federation was restarted and given the name England Bandy Federation in January 2017. In September 2017 the present name was adopted, as the federation widened its scope to all of the UK.