Shinty
Inverness shinty club have taken the innovative step of making one of their most promising young players a full-time development coach responsible for nurturing the potential talent in the biggest single population catchment area of the Highlands.
David Glass, 20, an under-21 shinty/hurling internationalist, is the man charged with the responsibility of introducing the game to the town's primary schools and restoring the Inverness club to its former glories. It is almost half a century since they last won the Camanachd Cup, defeating Oban Celtic in Glasgow in 1952. With the modern game's spiritual home the Bught Park as his base, Glass could not ask for more prestigious surroundings in which to operate.
For many years, local schools have failed to produce a stream of talent, largely due to a shortage of expertise, and the inability of the Camanachd Association to fund and staff development officers. Inverness have as a result been reliant on the occasional player with natural talent nurtured by a former playing father, or players drawn to the area by employment.
The appointment of Glass, who recently applied for the North area development officer's job which was secured by Ronald Ross, is a hugely imaginative move and one which will leave other clubs envious in the extreme. Glass will tour local primary schools coaching and sowing seeds for what will hopefully be the reinvention of Inverness who play in north division one but have far greater ambitions.
Club spokesman Pettier Gow said: ''This is a huge decision for a club to take considering we are an amateur sport, but the atmosphere at our meeting this week was electric. We all felt that David was an outstanding candidate and given time, he will now be able to tap into the potential we have always felt existed. We will give him every support and we all know that the club stands to gain an enormous amount from this in the long term.''
Glass will have to convince schools of the benefits of his appointment, which should not be difficult in that the lack of coaching expertise, particularly with regard to safety, has long been a problem. Parents, too, have taken some convincing of safety aspects, but with this appointment, Inverness have given the game a major boost.
The scale of Glass' task is illustrated by the fact that Inverness do not qualify for today's senior cup action with Kingussie's first round tie against Skye in the Bank of Scotland Cup first round, the pick of the action in the north. In the south there are just two ties in the equivalent competition for the Celtic Society Cup, Ballachulish going to Kyles and Tayforth entertaining Glenorchy at Perth.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article