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Anyone want to go a round of golf with Alex Salmond?

Alex Salmond playing golf
Alex Salmond playing golf

A round of golf with former First Minister Alex Salmond awaits the winner of a raffle to help a Highland shinty club buy a new pitch.

Newtonmore has its sights set on a 4.5-acre farmer’s field beside its existing home of The Eilan and needs to raise around £28,000 to turn a long-held dream of creating a new training facility into reality.

It has submitted a planning application to Highland Council for the £20,000 plot and is organising a variety of fundraising activities to reach its goal.

Some of the proceeds from a new book – The Boys of the Eilan, shinty in Newtonmore 1820-1945 – will help finance the project. It was published yesterday.

Around 250 people are expected to attend a forthcoming dinner and auction in Aberdeen.

And a raffle will mark the club’s 125th anniversary, with a top prize of a round of golf for two people to play Mr Salmond at Newtonmore Golf Club. Raffle tickets cost £2 each.

Newtonmore Camanachd Club secretary Ian Gibson said: “Summer shinty has been good, but we’ve got more activity in our youth and our children’s sections so The Eilan, in the early parts of the year in particular, is showing signs of extreme wear and tear.

“We’ve decided in the meantime to go for it as a training pitch and not full match standard.

“One of the members told me this was a dream of his for 40 years, so to be able to do it in our 125th anniversary year is just fabulous.”

The club had estimated that going the whole hog would have taken the cost, with drainage, into six figures.

Sports Scotland recommends a maximum use of a competition field of six to eight hours a week. Such is the current popularity of shinty locally that the pitch is being used for twice as many hours each week.

The club has discussed its proposals for the new facility with representatives of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and believes there should be no reason to object because its ambitions will not impact on the area’s flood plain.

The field is just a few yards from the existing ground. The club has bought a strip of land between the two which would help it expand and develop a new clubhouse in the future.