West go in the right direction with another win on the beach
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The final two days of the Christmas term have always been very busy ones at Farr High School but even more so over the past eight years when a new enterprise has been shoe-horned into the programme.
Not new exactly as the event resurrects a traditional shinty match which once formed a firm part of the festive season in the parishes of Farr and Tongue and which came to an end in the decade preceding the First World War.
This was known as "The Knotty", a vernacular form of shinty with even less rules than the present version, which was played out annually on Old New Year’s Day on Torrisdale Beach.
Teams were drawn from East and West with the dividing line being the River Borgie. That river formed the West team’s goal while the object of the East team was to defend their goal — the River Naver.
There were many more people around in those days — two and a half times as many as there are today — with a far higher proportion of young people, and having over 100 members in each team was not unusual.
It was also an occasion for celebrations of other kinds and the Caithness Courier of 1885 quotes a participant who claims that he had seen "more drink consumed in one day at the knotty than in the house selling spirituous liquors at Clachan in a whole year".
Participants in Thursday’s match, played in cold, wet and blustery conditions on Farr Beach, with a mere 12 players a side, were denied any such source of warmth but showed no sign of needing it as they played their hearts out on a pitch that gradually contracted as the tide rose.
Even this encroachment failed to deter them as boys and girls alike showed no hesitation in pursuing the ball in to the North Atlantic surf which certainly wasn’t at its highest temperature for the year.
The match gained an additional emphasis this year as it was being televised for BBC Alba and occupied a prime, and fairly lengthy, spot on Friday evening’s Gaelic news programme, An La, complete with on the spot commentary by presenter Donald Lamont from Lewis, himself a shinty player.
Also, after the match, Donald interviewed the school’s Gaelic teacher and shinty coach, Angus Millar, together with former pupil and shinty player for Boleskine, Andrew Henderson, who refereed the match, and East/West players Billy Allen from Melness and Cloe Mackay from Scullomie who, collectively, gave a very good account in Gaelic of the background to this special game and their feelings about it all from a vantage point above Torrisdale Beach where their ancestors had once struggled at the knotty.
Who won? In a close and really hard fought match the West team eventually proved the victors with the only goal of the tournament being scored by Steven Reid of Tongue to bring the series score to 5-3 in the West’s favour.
Later in the afternoon, still with the TV cameras present, the school held its annual Christmas Service in Bettyhill Church of Scotland at the culmination of which the minister, the Reverend Leslie Goskirk, presented the East/West Trophy to West Team Captain Billy Allen.
And the conclusion on An La? There might be plenty of beaches in the Gaeltacht where such a game was possible but would they be able to find participants as hardy as the young folk of Farr High School?
