Since AGM 2022, two of the Camanachd Association’s Board Members have moved to pastures new. Namely, John “Slippy” Finlayson and Willie “Can” MacDonald, both were presented with decanters to mark their time volunteering for the Camanachd Association and we know that each of them will continue to contribute to the development of the sport in other ways.

About Willie MacDonald:

A native of Ballachulish he played for the Primary School  before  eventually progressing to the Ballachulish senior team at the age of 13.

At the age of 24 Willie moved to play for Fort William, who had just been promoted to North Division 1 in the days before the Premier league had been established.

During this time he enjoyed great  success winning all Senior trophies available – his finest moment being the 1992 Camanachd Final in Glasgow when Fort William defeated Kingussie 1-0 to win the ‘Camanachd’ for the first time in their history, he also won the Albert Smith medal that day.

International honours arrived in 1993 when he was in the winning team against Ireland at the Bught  Park, a few years later he captained Scotland against Ireland in Fort William.

When his playing days were over he started coaching at all levels from School kids from Inverlochy School  through to Senior level with Fort William. He spent eight years coaching at Inverlochy school in where he took an almost complete team through from P1 to P7 –  in 2017/18 the school won all before them including the MacKay Cup – this along with some of the older kids he coached in the school making the breakthrough to Fort William senior team gave  him great satisfaction.

About John Finlayson:

John has been involved in shinty for over 50 years having started playing when in High School. Other than 5 years when he played for Glasgow University, where he also assumed the role of manager and administrator for the team, the rest of his shinty career was with Skye Camanachd. During his playing career he was lucky enough to win both Sutherland Cup and Camanachd Cup medals and also coached and then managed Skye Camanachd in the 1990’s.

In his previous career as a H.T. he was very involved in supporting youth shinty and sustainable efforts to grow the game in communities across the country. He established a very successful youth pathway in Portree when he was H.T. and he was also Chairman of The Isle of Skye Primary School’s Camanachd Association for many years.