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Congratulations to our cricket coaches from Northern Ireland, who have been nominated for the Sport Northern Ireland Coach of the Year Awards for 2016!
Congratulations to our cricket coaches from Northern Ireland, who have been nominated for the Sport Northern Ireland Coach of the Year Awards for 2016! It is a great achievement to be nominated for these awards as they will have been put forward by their peers and we wish best of luck to our coaches at the Awards Ceremony.

Wayne Hughes (Derriaghy Cricket Club and NCU U13s) has been nominated for Young Coach of the Year.

Colin Stewart (Laurelvale Cricket Club and NCU U15s) has been nominated for the Talent Development Coach of the Year.

Ryan Eagleson has been nominated for the High Performance Coach of the Year Award.

Michael Hingston, Coach Development Manager with Cricket Ireland commented, ‘having worked with these coaches during my time in the NCU set up, I can say that these nominations are richly deserved for all the hard work, passion and commitment Colin, Ryan and Wayne have shown over the years. These coaches continue to develop their coaching skills by regularly attending coaching workshops that are run by the Cricket Ireland and NCU, and demonstrate a real thirst to improve their coaching by working with and alongside senior coaches.

Some words from our nominees:

Ryan Eagleson, High Performance Coach of the Year Nominee
‘It’s a great honour to be nominated in a very strong list of candidates. The highlight of the last year was the Under 19 world cup in Bangladesh. The squad were away for 4 weeks and it was a great chance to work with players in a challenging environment and see them adapt their own game. To play a cricketing powerhouse like India live on TV was a great experience for the Under 19 squad and one which the lads embraced and enjoyed immensely.’

‘As a coach you are always looking to improve your knowledge and help younger players improve their all round game. With more experience in overseas conditions our younger players can continue to learn about playing in different environments. We continue to develop the best young talent in Irish cricket and hopefully see some of them have a successful career on the international stage.’

Wayne Hughes, Young Coach of the Year Nominee
‘It’s great to be nominated but I think its recognition of the hard work numerous coaches, volunteers, parents and youth players put in throughout the summer and winter months at Derriaghy. I’ve enjoyed being involved with the NCU Under 13s and I got the chance to tour Denmark with the NCU Under 15s in July. I enjoy watching and learning from coaches like Nigel Jones, Simon Johnston and Uel Graham and transferring the skills and experiences into my own coaching and further with club and schools. I thought the NCU club life development weekend was a good idea before the season.

I’d like to continue working with the NCU youth squads and learning from other experienced coaches. I’d like to further my qualifications in cricket or other sporting areas and, club wise, we’d like to further develop our boys youth cricket and build on our girls and women’s cricket.

Colin Stewart, nominated for Talent Coach of the Year Nominee

The nomination came as a surprise to me it must be said. It was put forward by Nicola Roberts, who is the captain of our ladies team. I can only assume it is for the work in getting the ladies team off the ground in the last couple of years and starting our girls’ team who played their first match this season. This I believe was a very important step in the overall development of Laurelvale CC and hopefully these teams can improve in both playing numbers and playing standard over the coming years. It has been very challenging and enjoyable trying to coach the ladies and girls, some of which had never seen a cricket match let alone play. The training sessions had to be structured to accommodate a wider range of skills and abilities than say some of the junior boy’s teams. Next season hopefully this will become easier, given they have this grounding in the basics under their belts. I would like to work on a wider range of skills and in particular improve the standard of fielding.

In complete contrast to this, I was fortunate to work alongside Scott and Simon with the NCU U15 squad, which is at the other end of the coaching spectrum. Going from conveying basic cricket skills with newcomers to the sport, to working with very talented young cricketers with years of good coaching behind them was challenging and enjoyable. I think in terms of development as a coach, this range of experience is invaluable and something I would like to continue to pursue in the future.

Wayne Hughes, Derriaghy Cricket Club
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