Even the Highlanders of the sport’s governing body, the Camanachd Association, endorse that macho impression in their description of the game. They write: “Its demands of skill, speed, stamina and courage make camanachd [shinty by its Gaelic name], the sport of the curved stick, the perfect exercise of a warrior people.”
Which is why meeting Sarah Corrigall comes as such a surprise. Sitting in the comfortable living room of her mother’s house, she appears the opposite of what you might imagine a shinty player to be. She’s neither muscular, nor fierce, nor warlike.
Yet here in front of me is the first woman to play for the Skye men’s team, a signal honour for a girl who measures just 5ft 4in, and who at 15 is still a pupil at Portree high school. After we talk, she’ll be getting down to her homework.
It’s not just her size and age that seem to count against her. Corrigall is modest to the point of shyness — she just doesn’t strike you as the kind of girl who gets in the thick of things on the sports field. But that is exactly what she has been doing for more than half her lifetime.
It’s true, she confides, she did find it “a bit scary” when she first started out. But that’s hardly surprising in a 12-a-side game where the clatter of sticks is often accompanied by howls of pain, and in which a leather ball, not unlike a cricket ball in dimensions and density, is whacked around at speeds of up to 70mph.
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Corrigall started playing the game at the age of seven and since then she has picked up a fearsome catalogue of wounds: her nose has been fractured; she has suffered a nasty cut under her left eye socket; and one of her nails was ripped out by a shinty stick. Her right ankle still makes a clicking sound after it was battered earlier this year.
Luckily, the teenager explains, with age has come a certain wisdom. She simply doesn’t get in as many scrapes as she used to.
“I can hold my own against most people,” she says, in a soft island accent. “And if I can’t, I’ll steer clear of it.
“The first time I played, I didn’t want to go near the other players because they all treat you just the same. But as I got older, I learnt how to protect myself and not go in for silly challenges.”
Though she lives in the village of Broadford, Corrigall manages to play sport seven days a week. She turns out for the Skye men’s team on a Saturday, plays for Invergarry women’s side and her school’s under-17 side, where again she lines up as the only girl. When she is not on the shinty field, Corrigall plays football with the local lads. She is, she admits with a smile, something of a tomboy.
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“I think sometimes one or two of the men are a little bit less rough,” she says, “but there are other big guys that have just shoved me. There are some guys who don’t like playing with girls and think they can bully me.”
Faced with a battle-scarred 15-year-old girl, you’d think those warlike Highlanders would know better than that.