When the teams step out at Bught Park, Inverness on Saturday for the Camanachd Cup Final, it will mark the end of a remarkable season for the Highland sport, which has seen women and girls enjoying a “breakthrough” year.
Camanachd, or shinty – which developed as hurling in Ireland - is played with curved sticks, or caman, and a ball, and is thought to have its roots in the training of warriors in Highland clans. But the intensely physical game, which evolved into a community then club-based sport by the late 19th century, was traditionally male-dominated, with women relegated to serving teas or providing dancing entertainment on the sidelines.
