Cammag

Cammag is a team sport originating on the Isle of Man. It is closely related to the Scottish game of shinty and the Irish game of hurling. Once the most widespread sport on Mann, it ceased to be played in the early twentieth century after the introduction of association football and is no longer an organised sport.

Equipment included a stick (camman, meaning "little curved thing" ) and a ball (crick or crig) with anything up to 200 players. Sometimes whole towns and villages took part, or even played each other. The camman was similar in design to the caman in shinty, both having no blade unlike the Irish camán. A gorse wood camman, if of suitable size and shape, was a very much treasured possession. The crick can be made from cork or wood, and varied from circular to egg-shaped, sized from approximately two inches in circumference to 'the size of a fist'. Old accounts tell that the crick was sometimes covered in cloth or leather.

Cammag season started on 26 December (St. Stephen's Day/ Hunt the Wren Day) and was only played by men (of all ages) during the winter. In modern times, an annual match of cammag is played in St John's on 26 December in keeping with this tradition.

History
The Manx word cammag, as in modern Scottish Gaelic camanachd and Irish camán, is derived from the Gaelic root word cam, meaning bent.

The sport may have been introduced to the Isle of Man by Irish missionaries in the fifth century. The earliest written record of the game dates to 1760, when three men and a boy were brought before the church court for playing cammag on a Sunday. References to cammag in the press first appear in 1843, when an attempt to ban the sport from being played within towns was reported by the Manx Sun. Further complaints about the playing of cammag were reported in 1846, 1851, 1869, 1871, and 1884. It appears that the sport was mainly played in an unorganised fashion by young boys during this period. However, on 14 March 1885 the Isle of Man Times reported that the "ancient game of Cammag" had been "revived" at Mooragh, Ramsey. During the rest of 1885, there were numerous reports of cammag being played in Ramsey and by December, the Ramsey Cammag Club had been formed. The club appears to have lapsed during 1886 but in October 1890, the Ramsey Courier reported that the club was being revived although it is unclear if this happened. In 1895, a letter to the Isle of Man Examiner reported that a cammag club was to be established in the village of Foxdale, but it is also unknown what became of this. Between 1894 and 1901, cammag was also played during the winter at the Isle of Man Lunatic Asylum.

In July 1938, a camogie exhibition match was played in Noble's Park, Douglas as part of the Celtic Congress being held on the island. The match drew comparisons with cammag in the press. In 1979, a composite rules shinty–hurling international match between Scotland and Ireland was played at Port-e-Chee, Douglas, as part of the island's millennium celebrations. Ireland won 7-3.

Corris's Close (now Athol Street) was the chief playing-ground in the town of Peel.

There is evidence to show that cammag had strong links to Welsh Bando, there are records in Wales that teams would have been games played all over the place with 20–30 men a side and played on a pitch 200 metres long. Once a year there would have been the very biggest games with hundreds of men to a team and numbers would not have been counted but more of a free for all.

Recent matches
An open Cammag match is played on Hunt the Wren Day (26 December) on the Tynwald field at St John's. Matches are held between the North and the South of the island. Research by David Fisher in the archives of Manx National Heritage clarified that the Northern line historically ran from the Grand Island Hotel to Niarbyl, south of Peel. The game usually starts at 2 p.m., and is played over three 20-minute periods.

Teams are informal and unregulated, often numbering more than 50 people (both males and females) on the field – historic commentary cites matches played with anywhere between four and two hundred players. In recent years, the match has been refereed by local radio presenter John Kaneen who revived the game in recent years. Playing equipment is supposed to consist of a bent stick, though there are many variations on the design. The game is a physically demanding contact sport, and protective equipment is advised.

The game usually revolves around a central pack, where a large number of players are confined in a small space, and the ball cannot move large distances. Breakout attacks down the open wings occasionally take place, though the large number of players in the centre of the field makes it difficult to attack the staked-out goals from outside positions.