Ballachulish Camanachd Club
| Ballachulish | |||
| Full name | Ballachulish Camanachd Club | ||
| Gaelic name | Comann Camanachd Bhaile a' Chaolais | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname | Balla | ||
| Founded | 1893 | ||
| Ground | Jubilee Park, Ballachulish | ||
| Manager | John McGilp & Morgan Smith | ||
| League | South Division Two | ||
| 2011 | 5th (South Division One) | ||
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Ballachulish Camanachd Club is a shinty team from Ballachulish, Lochaber, Scotland. The club was founded in 1893 the same year as the Camanachd Association. One of the sport's most famous clubs, they won the Camanachd Cup four times before World War I. The club is also the most northerly of teams playing in the South district, the kyle at Ballachulish being the traditional demarcation point between the two districts. The club has recently moved to one team playing South Division Two.[1]
[edit] History
Founded in 1893, the club won the Scottish Cup in 1899, 1901, 1911 and 1912. The outbreak of war was to put an end to this run of success and the club has never quite achieved these heights again. The club regained some modicum of strength by winning the Mactavish Cup in 1938, the only South team to ever do so, before war intervened again. The last Camanachd Cup Final appearance to date was in 1948 when they lost to Newtonmore.
The club has never recovered the Camanachd Cup, but has several Celtic, Sutherland and Dunn Cups to its name and enjoyed a great spell in the 1960s. The club's second team restarted in 2007 and competed in the Bullough Cup and the Sutherland Cup, did not enter competition in 2008 but be competed in 2009 in South Division Two. The second team was removed from all competition in March 2010.[2]. It re-entered in 2011.[3]
The return of Dugald Rankin from Skye Camanachdsaw an upsurge in the team's fortunes. However, Ballachulish has also exported David Campbell to Newtonmore and John MacDonald to Fort William, and is often losing players to other clubs. This has seriously affected the club's ability to return to the top level of the sport.
With an imbalance in the number of clubs in the South and North Divisions One, Ballachulish were approached to enter North Division One in season 2012.[4] However, only a month after rejecting this move, the club sensationally announced that the club would be scrapping its reserve team and also taking their first team down to South Division Two despite both sides finishing in respectable mid-table positions in 2011.[5]
[edit] In popular culture
- "The History of Ballachulish Shinty Club" has become a phrase used in connection with casting aspersions on any qualification seen as obscure or of low utility. [6]
- In her article, When it's rational to hate a stranger, Scottish journalist Sylvia Patterson wrote that she hoped footballer Cristiano Ronaldo would be resurrected as "as a 5ft 2in winger of a Ballachulish shinty team" in order to teach him a lesson about humility.[7]
[edit] External links
- Ballachulish @ Shinty.com
- Ballachulish History Jibe
- Ballachulish Shinty Club
- Cristiano Ronaldo Re-incarnated as a Baalachulish Shinty player
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