Skye Camanachd
| Skye | |
 |
|
| Full name | Skye Camanachd |
| Gaelic name | Comann Camanachd an Eilein |
|---|---|
| Nickname | Na Sgitheanaich |
| Founded | 1892 |
| Ground | Pairc nan Laoch |
| Manager | Willie Cowie/Peter Gordon |
| League | National Division One |
| 2016 | Premier Division, 9th |
| Reserve Manager | Kenny MacLeod |
| League | North Division One |
| 2016 | 5th |
| Skye Ladies | |
| Full name | Skye Camanachd Ladies |
| Gaelic name | Comann Camanachd an Eilein |
|---|---|
| Nickname | Na Ban-Sgitheanaich |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Ground | Pairc nan Laoch |
| Manager | Robbie Gordon |
| League | National Division One |
| 2016 | 1st |
Skye Camanachd is a shinty team from the Isle of Skye, Highland, Scotland. It plays in the Premier Division and has a reserve team in North Division One, as well as a Ladies team in the WCA National Division One and a Ladies reserve team in the WCA Development League. The club is based at Pairc nan Laoch, Portree.
Skye had a strong tradition of playing shinty on the Old Celtic New Year, and there were a Portree Club and a Bernisdale Club in existence in the 1880s. However, Skye Camanachd in its present form came into being in 1892, winning the first ever MacTavish Cup. The club was a founding member of the Camanachd Association and entered the Camanachd Cup despite mainland clubs trying to force them to play on the mainland. The club had to wait almost 100 years to win the Camanachd Cup. The club endured a turbulent 1960s, and after a few years without entering competition was reformed in 1969.
On 2 September 1969 the club was reconstituted with Colonel Jock MacDonald as president and Duncan MacIntyre, a shinty enthusiast and local police inspector at the time, as chairman, and immediately set about fund-raising for the forthcoming season.
Instrumental in the re-establishment of the club was Donald R. MacDonald, known as "DR", who was a Scottish Gaelic teacher at Portree High School. The coaching of shinty which he started in the High School sowed the seeds of Skye's greatest success, the Camanachd Cup win of 1990. DR managed the first team in the early 2000s and his sons, Somhairle, Aonghas and Gilleasbuig, all went on to play for the club. Aonghas also managed the club between 2009 and 2010. DR died in March 2010 on the first day of that year's shinty season, and Skye's matches were cancelled that day.
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Skye Camanachd won several Sutherland Cup finals and this was to build up to their greatest triumph, the Camanachd Cup in 1990.
Skye won the Camanachd Cup for the first time in 1990 against Newtonmore in Fort William. Inspirational in this victory was player Willie Cowie and his brother, manager Ross Cowie. The BBC program "Home", directed by Douglas Mackinnon, filmed behind the scenes on the day as well as the triumphant homecoming to Portree where they were met by a crowd of 5000 people, almost half the island's population. The expensive trophy was lost and then found in the street at 6 a.m. the next day: the local legend was that everybody thought that someone else was looking after it. In addition to winning the Cup, the Albert Smith Medal, an award presented to the Man of the Match in the final of the Camanachd Cup every year since 1972, was presented to Willie Macrae from Skye Camanachd in 1990. Skye remains the only team from an island to have won the Cup. The club toured Nova Scotia in 1991 in the afterglow of the success alongside Kingussie.
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Wikipedia