Sport
The local amateur football team is Oban Saints with a small stadium situated in Mossfield. However, shinty is a more popular game locally, with two major teams, Oban Camanachd and Oban Celtic, in the town. The Oban Times runs a "Spot the Shinty Ball" competition each week. Oban Cricket Club was formed in 2003 and plays in nearby Taynuilt. Oban Lorne Rugby Football Club is one of the more successful teams in the Highlands.
The Highlanders were a World Wrestling Entertainment wrestling tag-team originally from (and billed as from) Oban. Scuba Diving is also readily available around Oban. There are many dive operators running services in and around the area. The wreck diving is spectacular, with the Sound of Mull offering some truly world-class dive sites. Although weather and visibility can be variable, the local geography means that a dive somewhere can always be achieved.
A weekend chess congress is held in Oban each year in the Royal Hotel. It usually takes place on the last weekend of November or the first weekend of December and brings 150-200 players to Oban along with their families.
The West Highland Tennis Championships are held annually in July at Atlantis Leisure and attract some of Scotland's best players to the town. Past champions include Colin Fleming and Judy Murray.
Oban also has a thriving Martial Arts training facility, the Dojo offering Kyokushin Karate, Kick Boxing, MMA, Shukokai Karate, and Boxing classes.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)