Five girls from the Northern Cricket Union travelled to Dublin for their first session as part of the national Emerging Players Programme last week after being invited by Aaron Hamilton and the national selectors.
The five girls were part of a coaching day that took place in Bready last week, where National Head Coach and Performance Pathway Manager Aaron Hamliton and Chair of Selectors Rob O’Connor visited the North-West to do some coaching in the region.
Rebecca Hall, Cara Murray, Natasha Morton, Storm Cubain and Charlotte Lyons were some of the girls that impressed during that coaching session and all five were at YMCA Cricket Club on Friday after accepting invitations to be part of the EPP sessions for the remainder of the season.
Toni Miller and Alana Dalzell from the North-West Cricket Union were also invited to be part of training, but were unable to attend this week due to school commitments, it is hoped they will join the group and train with the EPP squad over the summer, bringing the total number of girls invived from the Norther Unions to ten.
Whilst the majority of the national Performance and EPP squads are made up of players based in the Leinster region, the group of girls are not the only girls from the region to be involved.
Naomi Matthews and Hannah Grieve already represent the NCU in the EPP, whilst Tory Lapsley travels from the NWCU to be part of the set-up. All three have been performing well in the new Super 3’s tournament, with Matthews and Lapsley playing for the Typhoons and Grieve representing the Scorchers.
Chair of Selectors Rob O’Connor said of the recent trip to Bready;
“We were very impressed with the standard of all the girls, and we will be keeping an eye on all club and provincial scores. We are confident that by the end of the summer we will have over 12 girls in the Irish squads from the Northern Unions.
“I am very excited about the addition of these 7 girls into the setup. For the standard of women’s cricket to improve, we must make sure that there are more girls playing cricket, in more areas, with more opportunities available to them. Hopefully in the near future, girls from the Northern Unions being selected for Ireland squads will be the norm, and won’t be a news story.”
The visit to the NCU was not a one-off trip for Hamilton, as he looks to spend more coaching time in the regions outside of Leinster as part of developing women’s cricket across all of Ireland. He will spend time, along with other national coaches and national selectors, supporting the growing women’s and girl’s programmes in the NCU and NWCU.
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Connaught
