A boy’s game for under 15s is also played and, for this, the ball is thrown up at 10.00am on the same days as the men’s game. At the end of World War II, a women’s game was played but only two instalments ever took place, on Christmas Day 1945 and New Year’s Day 1946. The game was discontinued due to public dislike and because it was ‘unladylike’.

The Ba’ hasn’t always been appreciated and several moves to ban it have been made. One such attempt was made in 1826 because ‘the inhabitants and community have been much annoyed and molested, and their persons and property hurt and endangered’.

On Christmas Day 1871, Kirkwall Football Club organised a game of rugby to start at the same time the Ba’ would start. The Uppies won by a goal to a try in what The Northman newspaper described as ‘more civilised’ in comparison to ‘the usual street riot’. Supporters of the Ba’, however, were not happy to have their game usurped and they vowed not to let it become diluted; the following year, the Ba’ was back to normal.

Nonetheless, another attempted distraction appears to have been made on Christmas Day 1891, when St Magnus Football Club and Thorfinn Football Club played a fixture on the same day as the Ba’.

Today, the game is popular and well-attended with plenty of participants. An article in the Orkney Herald from 4th January 1888, another period when the Ba’ was in rude health, suggests that during the late 1860s, it almost died out.

This was due to the fact that the Doon-the-Gates had such a long winning streak that the result was looked upon almost as a foregone conclusion. The article goes on to state that a few wins for the Up-the-Gates and an unspecified ‘half-failed attempt to ban the practise’ had given it a new lease of life.

The middle decades of the 19th century appear to have been a period of significant upheaval in the Ba’. It was in this period that the game changed from one in which the ball was kicked to one based on handling and carrying the ball (although kicking was still permissible).

An article in The Orcadian newspaper in January 1889 recalled what the game had been like in the 1840s, and described how one Uppie, James Mowat, could kick the ba’ the length of broad street and no one would try to pick it up. Writing in 1900, B. H. Hossack noted that, prior to 1850, ‘to have lifted the ball would have been very risky for the lifter; the ball was kicked or dribbled but never held, so it went all over the street or green’.

As the 19th century progressed, and Kirkwall became more built up, handling became more important, partly because it limited the risk of damage to properties but also because it made it easier to control the ball. This shift was almost universally accepted and reflected a trend also recognised in the traditional ball games of the Scottish Borders at about this time. In 1888, an attempt to curb handling was made by making the ball larger, and theoretically harder to carry, but the players soon adapted.

Even before the increase in size, kicking the ba’ would not have been done lightly. Those Orkneymen who routinely kicked the thing prior to the shift to a handling game must have been made of stern stuff. The current version of the ba’ weighs approximately 1.4kg and measures 22.6cm in diameter.

It is made of eight leather panels, alternatively black and brown in colour, stitched together using flax and tightly stuffed with cork dust, which used to be scraped from the grape barrels of local fruiterers but is now imported directly.

Each ba’ takes four days to make and four are made each year, two for the mens’ and boys’ games on Christmas Day and two for the games on New Year’s Day. The scorer of the winning goal in each game gets to keep the ball they scored with forever. This is a source of great pride and it used to be common for the winner to hang their ball in their front window for passers-by to admire.

The names of the scorers are recorded in the annals of the Ba’ and they pass into the folklore of the game. These winners achieve fame locally and, due to interest in the game from around the world, sometimes further afield; the winner of the Ba’ on Christmas Day 2003, Raymie Stanger, has been immortalised in English Heritage’s Played in Britain book series about the sports and games of the British Isles.

The names Barbara Yule and Violet Couper will forever be remembered as the first, and so far only, winners of the women’s Ba’. The most recent winners of the mens’ Ba’ are Danny Bain (Christmas Day 2025), a Doonie and the craftsman who made the ba’, and James Bailie (New Year’s Day 2026), an Uppie.