More Than a Game

The annual shinty match between Lochdubh and Dunbracken arrives with the trophy hanging in the balance. Dunbracken have won nineteen in a row, and a twentieth would hand them the cup forever, which explains the high tension in the air and the ruthless coaching style Lachlan has brought to the village team. Shinty is a serious business in the Highlands, and nobody in either village is above a bit of gamesmanship. Then the star goalie walks. Lachie McCrae Jr. quits the team without warning, and to make matters stranger, Lachlan himself turns into a lovesick Romeo over a voluptuous, leather-clad biker named Doloris Balfour.

Hamish suspects none of it is quite what it looks like. And he is right. The villagers hatch a plot of their own to beat whatever foul play Dunbracken have planned, and the match becomes a battle of wits as much as a game of shinty. The goalie's walkout is the talk of the village, and the theories about why are better than any sports commentary. The plot is hatched in whispers and executed with the precision of a village that has spent generations organising funerals and weddings, so a shinty match is nothing.

Stuart Hepburn wrote it, Mandie Fletcher directed, and it aired in April 1997. Morag Hood's Doloris is worth every bit of the disruption she causes, and Billy Riddoch gets to play Lachlan as both tyrant and lovesick fool, a double act in one man. Stuart Davids' Lachie Jr. sulks magnificently, Robert Carlyle keeps his suspicions to himself until they matter, and Brian Alexander, Brian Pettifer, Mona Bruce, Iain McColl, Stuart McGugan and Duncan Duff make up the rest of the village side.

Sport brings out the worst in everyone, which is precisely why it makes such good television. The trophy stays where it belongs, or at least where the village can argue about it. It is one of the funniest episodes of the series, and it never once forgets that the match matters to the people playing it.