On The Road: Bob would have been here for Oban Celtic’s big day… but he had a wee golf game on!

There is a nod, it seems, to absent friends. What looks suspiciously like a golf bag sits on the sidelines as Oban Celtic’s players prepare for a cup final.

‘It holds our sticks,’ one player says. ‘Some people call them camans but they have always been sticks to me.’

The bag is wheeled to the Oban Celtic technical area at the pitch in the village of Cannich, home of Strathglass Shinty Club.

However, there are two missing heroes for the final of the Chieftain’s Cup.

Dougie MacIntyre, co-manager of the team, is in Portrush to watch his son, Robert, a passionate shinty player, fiddle about with a golf stick.

‘Aye, they have a wee golf game on,’ says Oban co-manager Cammy MacCallum with a smile. He laughs at the jocular suggestion the pair should be fined or suspended for missing the final.

‘They both would have been here if Robert had missed the cut,’ he says of the local hero who was at the sharp end of the Open Championship this weekend.

Many of the Celtic supporters, who have travelled more than 100 miles by bus and car to attend the final, believe Robert would have played on Saturday.

He certainly played last week at Aberdour, coming on to help Celtic achieve a 2-2 draw. This may stand as one of the most unusual preparations for the Open.

‘Both he and Dougie are wanting updates on the game,’ says Stephen Campbell, who is helping with dugout duties.

‘I remember once we were playing and I got a text from Bob asking how we were getting on. I replied: “Are you not playing in a tournament?’’

‘He texted back: “Aye, I’m delayed on the tee”.’

The focus of the MacIntyres was thus on matters at hand in Northern Ireland. It is, though, reasonable to suggest that much of their heart lay in the glen in Cannich where their team — their mates — forged out a victory to lift their first senior cup in what a club historian described as ‘many a year’.

The MacIntyres, whisper it, have a celebrated relationship with Oban Camanachd, the other team in the town. Dougie and his brother, Gordon, won the Camanachd Cup with that team in 1996.

‘I was in that side too,’ says Campbell. ‘Dougie was a wonderful player, certainly one of the best Oban ever produced and I would say one of the best the sport has produced.’

Gordon MacIntyre scored the winner in that final, only seven weeks after losing an eye in a shinty match.

‘The game was easy for them but the rest of us had to work a bit harder,’ recalls Campbell of the prowess of the brothers. ‘Bob could have followed them. He has everything, hand to eye co-ordination, the physicality and the shinty brain. He loves the sport, too.’

Bob’s dalliance with golf meant MacCallum had to leave off-field coaching duties to Campbell as he placed himself between another set of sticks — the goalposts.

‘Our keeper left after last season so I have had to step in,’ he says. ‘I am 50, so I raise the average age of the team quite a bit.’

The team is mostly comprised of local lads. ‘I have had most of these boys since primary three,’ says Campbell. ‘It’s great to see them progressing and playing in a final.’

David Hamilton, 75, has a longer association. ‘I played with the side in the seventies,’ he says. He points out that boys and girls can now play in six-a-side competitions at under-five level.

‘It’s all about getting them out on a field,’ he says, before generously presenting me with a bundle of shinty books. He remains a stout advocate for the sport and is an organiser for the Macaulay Cup which is contested by the best eight teams in the country.

‘Today’s competition is for clubs who only run one side,’ says Hamilton. ‘But it means so much to us.’

Campbell has one more contribution to make before settling on the touchline. ‘They say shinty was a precursor to golf,’ he says. Well, it was for a lad on the other side of a strip of water.

History and culture gently co-exist in the shadow of the clubhouse at Strathglass Shinty Club. It is cup final day, the cars are parked in a field, the buses sit in a lane, and the burgers are being cooked on a barbecue.

The venison variety is consumed voraciously, though there seems to be a limited appetite for the vegan option. A shinty final is, after all, a meaty affair played amid the clash of sticks and bodies, with a ball flying distances that would constitute a decent wedge shot in Portrush.

The modern story of shinty is fascinating, with a corporate restructure providing it with the infrastructure to grow the game. Burton Morrison, president of the Camanachd Association which runs the game, was brought up just down the road in Glenurquhart, although studies took him subsequently to Aberdeen and business to Glasgow.

‘The sport is in a healthy state with more youngsters playing,’ he says. ‘We are sending an under-17 team to Ireland next week.’

He adds: ‘Bob generates interest. Shinty is being mentioned on the highest stage of world golf. He doesn’t forget his roots.’

Roddie MacLennan, chairman at Strathglass, was pleased to host the first final of the Chieftain’s Cup, previously known as the Single Team Cup. He pointed out boards that helped tell of the formation of shinty as a formal sport with codified rules. 

Central to this is the magnificent figure of Captain Archibald Macra Chisholm, elected chieftain of the first Camanachd Association in 1893. He was the founder of Strathglass Shinty Club in 1879, so it was fitting that the final was played there on Saturday.

History was also represented in physical form by a variety of elders of the game. Alan Hill, 88, admits with a smile he could be described as a newcomer to Oban, only coming to the town to live in 1943. 

‘I played a few games for Oban Celtic,’ he says. He was introduced to the game when he became a ‘message boy’ for a Ballachulish owner of a mobile shop. ‘We saw a lot of games back in the day.’

Hill, who has co-authored a wonderful history of sport in Oban, adds: ‘It gave me a great affinity for the game.’

He is joined by Ian MacPhee, a mere stripling at 80, who has written a history of Ballachulish Shinty Club. Both recall Bob’s grandfather, also Dougie, who was a great shinty player. ‘He was superb,’ says MacPhee. ‘He would shove his stick out and nothing would get by him.’

They both attest that shinty is better run now, with a board of directors making it a more professional body. But they insist that shinty will always have its roots in the community.

‘The club means so much to the village,’ says MacPhee of Ballachulish. ‘During Covid, the boys would go round the doors making sure everyone was all right.’

Both bemoan the trend of players leaving local teams for bigger clubs. Celtic and Ballachulish play in the South Division, below the Premiership. Players are attracted to the top level.

‘In my day, you played for your village team and that was that,’ says MacPhee. ‘It was a village sport with great rivalry. But players can now just move on.’

Some even venture into other sports. In Bob MacIntyre’s case, he always carries more than a bit of Oban Celtic with him — from Augusta to Portrush to the silver sands at Aberdour.