LEAN GU DLÙTH – FOLLOW FAITHFULLY
Friday 5 June, 9pm, BBC ALBA
Trawling through half a century of shinty's intriguing web of wayward strands, in Lean gu Dlùth (Follow Faithfully), Gaelic speaking former player Hugh Dan MacLennan from Lochaber examines how the sport he grew up with led him into a career as a historian and sports commentator.
Produced by BBC Gàidhlig, Lean gu Dlùth is a series of two hour-long documentaries to be broadcast on BBC ALBA commencing this Friday, with the second programme going out the following Friday. This complements the start of BBC ALBA’s shinty package which will provide coverage of five live cup finals throughout the summer.
Listeners to BBC Radio nan Gàidheal will also be able to hear the series starting on Monday 8th June at 11.30 with a repeat at 22.00.
The first programme begins with an evocation of Hugh Dan's formative years in Caol, near Fort William, where he learned the game which has had a huge impact on his personal and professional life for the next 50 years. The programme follows Hugh Dan from his early school days in Lochaber, through to his university years in Glasgow and his current role in Scotland's oldest and indigenous sport as a writer and broadcaster.
Amongst those appearing in the documentary are his mother, who still lives in Lochaber and recalls Hugh Dan's first encounters with a caman (shinty stick), former school-day adversaries and sporting acquaintances in Ireland with whom he has forged significant lasting cultural relationships.
Hugh Dan said: “Having been so closely involved in shinty at so many different levels over the years, I was in some ways surprised by my own failure to look back at what my involvement had actually been. It's a game which has had an enormous influence on my life one way or another through lasting friendships, attending a number of fantastic highs of sporting achievement and excellence, through to some of the greatest tragedies, losing some close friends along the way.
“There are a number of threads which run through the programme most notably the continuity of tradition which has enabled the game to survive, sometimes despite itself. It was, in all honesty, the first time I had really reflected on my own participation in shinty, and it has brought home to me what a privilege it has been to be involved in the way I have, attending some fantastic venues and events, but most of all meeting some of the most special people throughout the world, particularly in Ireland.”
Lean gu Dlùth (Follow Faithfully), taken from the Gaelic slogan of the Camanachd Association, shinty's world governing body, follows Hugh Dan to the venue of his first senior match at Balmacara on the West Coast and to Skye where he reminisces with old school friends. Hugh Dan also travels to Aberdeen to get his hands on the famous Littlejohn Vase, one of the most magnificent sporting trophies in the UK, and then on to Ireland to visit the iconic Croke Park, one of the finest sporting stadiums in Europe, where he played as a spindly teenager.
BBC ALBA’s package of five live shinty games over the summer months will cover a series of cup finals commencing with the MacTavish Cup Final being played at Bught Park, Inverness on Saturday 13 June, where Newtonmore take on Kingussie.
Lean gu Dlùth was produced by Donald Macleod and the first programme will be broadcast on BBC ALBA on Friday 5 June at 21.00 which is available on Sky channel 168 & Freesat channel 110.