Obscure Sports from Around the World: Scottish Shinty

Shinty. The very word is enough to stimulate titters and produce guffaws. And that's before you even see the players in this popular field game that originated in the Scottish Highlands. Shinty would originate in the Scottish Highlands. Or maybe the streets of the slums of Liverpool or Manchester. It all depends on how much you want to tick off a Scotsman by intimating that his culture is one of anarchy and chaos. Trying to tame anarchic chaos into a game with almost no rules does seem something that only a…well, let us not tempt fae.

Shinty does attempt to enforce a small set of rules onto a field that is very much a modern model of anarchy. Watching a game of shinty for the first time is likely to leave your head spinning and your mind more confused than it would be after a David Lynch film festival. They call jai alai the world's fastest game, but surely shinty when played well and professionally is in the top five. The best possible way to gives yourself an image of shinty in your head without having actually seen it, and for God's sake don't tell Saussure you are doing this, is to imagine demented hybrid of field hockey and lacrosse played with 12 players facing off against each other. You might think that a fast moving game featuring burly Scots in shorts and tight shirts would naturally spread across the world and increase in popularity on a scale not seen the Mayans invented baseball and sold the rights to Abner Doubleday for 17 dollars. But, alas, that is not the case. In fact, as far any ruling body for shinty can tell, the bulk of shinty clubs are located within a few hundred square miles of where the game was invented. Shinty has managed to cross the Atlantic but by comparison, soccer is beloved by every American.

The object of shinty could not be simpler as it has been utilized in a number of similar games: hit a ball into the opposing team's hail. Of course, hail is shinty talk for goal. Players are equipped with a curved or hooked stick known as a caman that is roughly a yard long. High quality these caman used to be; they were usually constructed of hickory and if hickory wasn't available the go-to wood is the same one for most baseball bats: ash. Today, of course, things are different and most camans are little more than pressed wood of the kind that the desk you may be sitting at right now is made of. The ball in shinty is made of cork because, well, the proximity of Scottish Highlands to all the cork to be found within the borders of the U.K. Holding a shinty ball in the hand of the average man would look roughly like Wilt Chamberlain holding a regulation baseball in his hand. Good thing that ball is made of cork because the uniform sported by shinty players offer precious little protection: shirts, shorts shinpads and headgear. Aside from that, the body is a wide open target for the shinty ball.

Like American football, shinty is played in two halves. The length this bifurcation of playing time is entirely dependent on whether teams can forward a full 12 man roster or will go with only half a team. The 12 player games are split into two 45 minutes sections while a six player game only lasts a total of 30 minutes. The rules of shinty are very loosely leafed together. In fact, the detailed rules of a shinty game may vary from one match to another. The basic things to know is that the field is anywhere from 70 to 80 yards wide and up to 170 yards long. Found on this field are the center circle placed smack dab in the middle, a penalty area situated 20 yards in front of the goal and oddly shaped area within 10 yards of each goal that can get your attackers an offside penalty. The fun begins when a referee tosses the cork ball into the air above the opposing captains who have crossed their sticks above their head. The caman stick is an all purpose piece of equipment that can be used to hit the ball when it's sailing through the air as well being drafted into use to block opponents. As with soccer, touching the ball with your hands is a big no-no that is allowed only by the goalkeeper. Of course, this being the strange game of shinty, one of the strictest rules across the board is that the goalkeeper is only allowed to place it into motion by giving it a slap with the back of his hand.

If that doesn't make you want to seek out a game of shinty, I'm at a loss.