Mackintosh strike seals victory for Newtonmore
“HAVE you done shinty before?” they asked, as I nominated myself to cover the Camanachd Cup Final with favourites Newtonmore meeting Oban. My reply, that I was covering shinty when they were still trying to eat Lego, quickly shut them up. But my last cup final wasn’t yesterday, or the year before.
Back in the day, shinty’s big day out belonged to the first weekend in June, and in journalistic terms, attracted a disparate, even desperate bunch of hacks, particularly those suffering from withdrawal symptoms, what with no football to cover, and with a taste for the wares of a certain sponsor, when copious amounts of the “water of life” was sampled purely to stave off dehydration, and/or, for medicinal purposes.
While many of my erstwhile companions are no longer with us, neither of the above excuses could be used to explain my visit to Fort William on Saturday for the latest instalment of shinty’s mostanticipated finale, unlike a letter from a Mr Angry of Inverness. I do hope he is still “taking” this particular publication after the weekend.
This may have been a national final, with live television coverage, but shinty still has to fight for exposure, as do the exponents of the sport. Thankfully, today’s superstars are still the same, honest, ordinary blokes I’d bumped into nearly 30 years ago, still willing to talk, still nice guys in victory or pain.
I recall telephoning one household moons ago to be told that their son (and club’s star striker) was in the bath, but it wasn’t a problem to interrupt him and he would come to the phone. Our conversation had barely begun when in the background his mother screamed “for God’s sake find a towel”.
On Saturday, it was more about a father. Newtonmore’s Andy Mackintosh had become a dad for the first time a few days earlier, and while he gave a man of the match performance, and collected the Albert Smith Medal for his efforts, the abiding memory from this day was him collecting the spoils with his baby daughter, Marnie, is his arms.
“Now that she was here she wasn’t going to miss it,” joked the 25-year-old joiner, who has the coming week off, to get used to feeding times and nappy changes, rather than celebrate team or personal achievements. “I thought I’d had a pretty solid game. It was a bit of a shock to hear I’d won the Medal, but another nice surprise this week.”
You can’t have this amount of sporting passion, muscle on the hoof, contact and big sticks without the odd scrape or bump. That there isn’t more rhesus O spilled is always a surprise, but injuries do happen.
I recall the night at BBC Scotland’s ‘Sportscene Review and Scottish Sports Personality of the Year’ dinner at The Marriott –1992 to be exact, when Ally McCoist won and joked about rigging the vote – when a couple of shinty invitees rolled up, one on crutches, the other in a wheelchair, legs plastered up after being injured the previous day. Broken bones were not going to deny them a night in Glasgow and a free meal.
There was an element of that on Saturday. Neil Stewart wasn’t going to miss the celebrations, arriving back at the ground after a hospital visit which appeared to have lasted long enough for him to have collected a Boy Scout bandage on his leg. When he went down in the first half, play still raged on around him as he beckoned assistance from the bench. His diagnosis, that his knee had dislocated, was right.
“I’ve done it before so I just popped it back in when I was lying there,” said the 20-year-old, a joiner by day, occasional orthopaedic physician, who had suffered the same injury twice already. “But I’ll be fine to play in few weeks. I might even be after tonight.” That was putting a lot of faith in that bandage.
Back on the field the action was fast and frenetic, if a little fragmented. There were chances and near misses, but neither side played near their best, although you couldn’t afford to take your eyes off the action, other than for a glance outside the ground where life appeared more sedate.
A steam train, with corridor carriages, rolled past in slow motion. I kept my observation a secret, for good reason. A few months ago I asked why so many people were parked up, roadside on the A9, only to be given a 10-minute lecture that it wasn’t a “choo choo” but the Royal or Flying something, a blah-blah Class, such and such a number. Trainspotters could be anywhere, even at An Aird. Hence my silence on this occasion.
The only number though that mattered for Newtonmore fans was whether their team could make it a 31st Camanachd Cup victory, which thanks to Glen Mackintosh’s solitary goal after a couple of minutes, was all that separated the teams.
“To be honest, I thought I’d given us a great start and nothing more,” said the 37-year-old, now with a third Camanachd Cup winners’ medal during his 21-year Newtonmore career.
“We made chances but the game never really hit the standards the teams are capable of. The two defences played so well. I thought there would be a lot more goals, but I’m not complaining.”
For Oban, the wait for a Camanachd Cup win continues. After a bad start, they more than held their own as they pursued a first victory in shinty’s premier competition since 1996, but the reaction of their manager Iain Hay afterwards – a shrug of the shoulders and a shake of the head – confirmed that for Oban players and fans, this was an opportunity missed.