History
Due to lacking a strong Highland community like the other three ancient University towns in Scotland, St. Andrews was the last university to enter the senior leagues. Shinty was reintroduced by medical students in 1967, who were looking for an unusual activity to participate in. To this day, the vast majority of St Andrews players are entirely unfamiliar with the sport before they come to the university.
The club enjoyed a more fruitful late 2000s, finishing above Edinburgh and equalled with Aberdeen in the 2007 Littlejohn, in the St Andrews Sixes the team lost in the final to London Camanachd. The club has also benefited from players playing for both the Aberdour Shinty Club and Shinty in the United States, gaining valuable experience.
The club has achieved great success off the pitch, with a membership which far outstrips most shinty clubs in Scotland. The team has many secret traditions handed down from chieftain to chieftain.
The club's women's team has also been successful in recent years. The club originally played in the Women's Shinty League setup but were often overmatched. However, in the 2010s, with a large intake every year of new students, the club has managed to achieve University league success.
The club hosts the annual St. Andrew's Sixes for the Fingal Memorial Shield.
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.
Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture and the United Kingdom has played a significant role in the organisation and spread of sporting culture globally. In the infancy of many organised sports, the Home Nations, England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were heavily involved in setting out the formal rules of many sports, and formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After 1922, some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland, though many continued to be organised on an all-Ireland basis. For this reason, in many though not all sports, most domestic and international sport is carried on a Home Nations basis, and England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are recognised as national entities.
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.
London Camanachd is a shinty club in England. They have historically been attached to the South District. They went into abeyance in 1992 but were reconstituted in 2005. They played the first officially recognised Shinty match outside Scotland in 80 years on Saturday 22 July 2006 against the Highlanders. Currently the club field men's and women's teams in English and Scottish competitions as well as exhibition matches in Europe, most recently in 2018 in Brussels.
Aberdour Shinty Club is a shinty club which plays in Aberdour, Fife, Scotland. It is the only senior Shinty Club in Fife and was founded in 2001. In 2011, the club entered two teams into senior competition. Its first team competing in Marine Harvest National Division, and its second team in South Division Two.
Beauly Shinty Club is a shinty club from Beauly, Scotland. The club was founded in 1892. The club has two sides, the first team competing in the MOWI Premiership and the second team in MOWI North Division One.
Shinty was played in its original form throughout North and South America by Scottish settlers until the early 1900s when the practice died out. Shinty, and its close Irish relative hurling as well as the English bandy, are recognised as being the progenitors of ice hockey and are an important part of North America's modern sporting heritage.
Inverness Shinty Club is a shinty club from Inverness, Scotland. The first team competes in North Division One and the second team in North Division Three. Founded in 1887 as Inverness Town and County Shinty Club to distinguish from other clubs in Inverness such as Clachnacuddin, Inverness moved to the Bught Park in 1934. Inverness won the Camanachd Cup in 1952. The club struggles to compete for players with the wide proliferation of football clubs in Inverness, in particular Inverness Caledonian Thistle but still manages to put out two teams.
In the sport of shinty, there are several clubs which play under the banner of one of the Scottish universities. However, these clubs are not always student teams in the strictest sense of the word, and have a long history of participation at national senior level. Since the introduction of a summer season, only the Aberdeen University Shinty Club continues to play in the senior leagues, although Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews have all done so in the past.
Edinburgh University Shinty Club is one of the oldest shinty clubs in existence having been founded in 1891. The club, which represents the University of Edinburgh has both male and female team sides, with players coming from other further and higher education establishments in the city, including Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh Napier and Edinburgh College. Whilst formally a University Shinty team, the club has a long history of playing at national level.
Composite rules shinty–hurling —sometimes known simply as shinty–hurling—is a hybrid sport of shinty and hurling which was developed to facilitate international matches between the two sports.
Lisa Norman MacColl is a shinty player and manager from Kincardine, Fife, Scotland. She is a Scottish International but is most renowned for having founded and developed Aberdour Shinty Club in 2001.
SCOTS Camanachd is the only shinty team in the British Armed Forces.
Edinburgh East Lothian Shinty Club was a sports club, a shinty club which played in the South Division Shinty League, based in Musselburgh, East Lothian. They were formerly known as Musselburgh Camanachd until 2000. In 2007 they withdrew from the league due to team-raising difficulties. The club is currently dormant.
The Cornwall Shinty Club is a shinty club from Cornwall in the UK. Formed in 2012, it is one of few clubs outside the Scottish Highlands.
The English Shinty Association (ESA) is the main body for promoting and encouraging the sport of shinty in England and Wales.
Caithness Shinty Club is a shinty team from Caithness, Scotland. They are the most northerly club in Scotland, based primarily in Thurso but pulling players from across the county.
The Fingal Memorial Shield is a trophy in the sport of shinty. It is currently the trophy presented to the winners of the St Andrew's Sixes, an international six-a-side tournament.
Dunoon Camanachd is a shinty club, from Dunoon, Scotland. The team competed from 2016 to 2017 in South Division Two but its senior side went into abeyance in 2018.
Katie Dougan is a Scottish rugby player from Fort William who has played in multiple Women's Six Nations Championships, including the 2021 Women's Six Nations Championship.
