Highland Council Honour Portree Primary School's MacKay Cup Winners. | |
04 October 2008 The Highland Council honoured Portree Primary School's MacKay Cup winning team at a reception at Pairc nan Laoch on Friday 3 October 2008. The event was attended by players, parents, coaches and Skye Ward Councillors Drew Millar and Ian Renwick and Ward manager Jan Laing. Also in attendence were Portree Primary school Headmaster John Finlayson and coaches Willie Cowie and Neil MacLean. In his speech, Councillor Drew Millar said "It really doesn’t seem like 3 years ago since a number of us were at the Council Offices at Tigh na Sgire celebrating Portree Primary Schools’ success in winning the 2005 MacKay Cup. At that time, it was 31 years since the School team had last won the prestigious competition – back in 1974 in fact under the guidance of DR MacDonald. Now, we might not have Ellen MacArthur here to make the presentations as we had back in 2005 – you’ll just have to make do with me this time - but I’m sure we’ll all have a great night all the same. It’s fantastic that we’ve only had to wait another 3 years for the school to once again become Scottish Champions and fingers are already crossed for the 2009 competition. In fact the school team has had a very successful 2008, sweeping the boards in almost all local, Highland, and National events. The school has a fantastic coaching network for all sports and on the shinty front, they won all the local indoor tournaments this year for all the various age groups including the girls’ event. They also won all the local outdoor tournaments. The team that won the MacKay Cup also won the local Talisker league, the Bank of Scotland Competition, and the Isle of Skye Round Table Sixes, as well as the MacIntyre Cup and the Milngavie Bearsden tournament. They are also the impressive Shinty World Cup winners, beating Just a couple of weeks ago, Portree Primary won the North of Scotland sixes, here in Portree. It’s great to see such competitions hosted locally and I know that there were many complementary remarks regarding how the organizers ran the competition. In Primary School shinty terms, the Mackay Cup is the big prize. It’s especially impressive that a Skye team should win the competition, not just because of the skill involved but also because of the travel involved. These youngsters had to set off for the final from Portree very early one Saturday morning for a Portree's path to the final started away back in February when they defeated Ardnamurchan. They followed this up with a good win against the strongly fancied Inverlochy. They then beat Lochaber and in the semi final, they met a strong Kingussie team coached by ex Kingussie star Davie Anderson. Portree ran out 6-4 winners to clinch their place in the final. The final was an exciting affair with Portree beating Rockfield – who are from Oban incidentally – by 5 goals to 4. Young Willie Cowie also won the Anne Cameron Memorial Quaich for man of the match. He obviously takes after his dad more than his uncle Ross! The big prize in shinty has always is the Camanachd Cup and I’m sure that if the young players who have been so successful this year keep practicing, maybe one day they can bring the Camanachd Cup back to Skye once again. So to Headmaster John Finlayson, his band of many sporting coaches - but especially Willie Cowie and Neil MacLean - who were mainly involved with the Mackay Cup winners, and especially all the players, well done and for the benefit of shinty on Skye, please keep up the good work".
Portree captain Jack Latton led his team as they were presented with speacial medals to recognise their achievement.
This is the third time that Portree Primary School has been the Scottish Champions. They first won the competition in 1974 and then won it 31 years later in 2005 before this year's success. |