Sport / Island Games supporters club gearing up for biggest backing ever in Orkney
AROUND 200 to 300 supporters are set to descend on neighbouring Orkney to roar on Shetland’s athletes in this summer’s Island Games.
It will be the biggest backing that Shetland has had at an Island Games since it hosted the event 20 years ago.
The team’s official supporters club are gearing up for the short journey to Orkney this July, with founding member Olive MacLeod saying this games will be “completely different to any other one”.
The preparation for each games usually begins for the supporters club over a year before it starts, with hotels and self-catering options scoped out.
But this time around they have been able to relax a little more, MacLeod explains.
“Usually we organise group accommodation for everyone, but there’s not a lot of accommodation in Orkney,” she told Shetland News.
“So this time we’re letting everybody do their own thing.
“There’s that many Shetlanders that ken Orcadians.”
There will be “more Shetlanders than ever before” at the 2025 games, MacLeod says, with “200-300 people at least” going down.
Supporters are being encouraged to order t-shirts and pin badges from the club in advance to ensure the blues’ support is as vocal and noticeable as possible.
The club is holding a meeting on Wednesday 21 May at Islesburgh in Lerwick at 7pm which is open to anybody going to Orkney, where they can order supporters attire to wear.
Shetland Island Games Association secretary Bob Kerr will also attend to pass on information about the Orkney games.
MacLeod and friend Sheila Manson started the Shetland supporters club after being impressed by a group of supporters from Åland at the 2005 games here.
“We organised a meeting in Islesburgh and waited to see if anyone would turn up,” she laughed.
Two years later the Shetland supporters club were in the Greek island of Rhodes giving the blues fervent backing, and then in Åland in 2009 to support the team.
In fact MacLeod says there is just one games she has had to miss – the 2013 event in Bermuda, which proved too costly for many athletes and fans.
She said the experience of supporting Shetland at the Island Games “takes you to places that you would never go to”.
The rearranged games this summer are a completely different occasion altogether though, taking most athletes and supporters to an island they have likely visited numerous times before.
MacLeod said organising travel for this summer was as “easy” as it could get.
Finding hotel or self-catering accommodation had proved an impossibility however, but she said it was “great we have that friendship between the islands” that Shetlanders travelling down could bunk with Orcadian pals.
MacLeod and Manson have a background in the swimming scene so will be poolside as much as they can this July, but she says they try to get to “everything that we can”.
“The point of being there is to support the team, so we do try to get to as many sports as possible,” she said.
The club sells pin badges unique to each games, with the Shetland flag and the host island’s flag on them, and MacLeod said swapping badges with other islands was a “big thing”.
“Folk try and get as many as they can,” she said.
“It does get competitive. Some of the badges are like hen’s teeth, so people are really trying to get them.”
MacLeod said she thought there would be a friendly rivalry between Shetland and Orkney this summer, but also “a lot of friendship”.
And she believes the blues will give the raucous travelling support plenty to shout about.
“The Shetland team always do us proud,” she said.
“We just want to wish the team good luck.”
The supporters club meeting takes place in Islesburgh at 7pm on Wednesday 21 May, with shirts and badges available.
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