Cricket Development
Progress Report July-December 2016
National Schools:
Cricket was played in the schoolyards of 33 National schools throughout Fingal with over 6600 children, being introduced to the game this year. At the end of the year, from September to December, we focussed on eight schools with over a 1350 children participating. Cricket in National schools has developed an excellent name throughout the Fingal County due to our organisation, structure of sessions, punctuality, appearance and enjoyment the children are obtaining from the sessions.
| Scoil Mhuire NS | Blakestown |
| St Philip’s NS | Blanchardstown |
| Castleknock NS | Castleknock |
| St Patrick’s NS | Diswellstown |
| Mary Mother of Hope | Ongar |
| Holy Family NS | Swords |
| Swords ET | Swords |
| Tyrrelstown ET | Tyrrelstown |
Secondary Schools:
We delivered cricket sessions at Mount Sackville girls’ school with 5th year students where we hopefully will get more girls taking up cricket and playing with the school team. This will increase the numbers and hopefully they will enter another team into the school’s league next year. We also started cricket in Fingal Community College. We hope the cricket will take off at Fingal Community College and then have a friendly match for them next year with the hope to enter them into the schools league in 2018. We have been in contact with Castleknock Community College and Le Cheile Community College where we will start cricket sessions in 2017.
Teacher Workshops:
This is the second year we are offering schools in Fingal a Cricket Workshop for Teachers as part of their ‘Croke Park’ hour. We agree a date with a school and then go into that school for an hour to do a course on cricket, mainly games that teachers can play with their classes during PE sessions. This term we have delivered to three schools namely: St Philip’s NS, St George’s NS and Scoil Chormaic CNS with a total of 73 teachers participating. These sessions have been well accepted with feedback from the schools saying the teachers are taking the children for cricket during their own PE sessions. So far, we have had St Patrick’s NS, Corduff, Tyrrelstown ET and St Patrick’s NS, Skerries interested in participating at the beginning of 2017 - we are just awaiting confirmation of date.
Summer Camps:
It was a fun filled and busy summer for cricket all over Fingal. Children were playing all forms of cricket – backyard, street, club matches, tournaments etc. Over 500 schoolchildren attended a number of summer cricket coaching camps held within Fingal cricket clubs making them the most successful camps run in recent times. The summer camps ran over 4/5 days at different venues – Balbriggan CC, North County CC, The Hills CC, Ring Commons CC and Malahide CC. The growth of cricket in Fingal was clear to see during the running of these camps with over 100 of these children experiencing club cricket for the first time. All the camps experienced record numbers attending and this is mainly due to the great work that local clubs, Fingal County Council & Cricket Leinster are doing through the 'school visit coaching programme' that has been running for over 10 years now.
Ardgillan Castle Exhibition match:
On Sunday, August 14th there was an exhibition match played in Ardgillan Castle between The Hills CC and Balbriggan CC. The match was the first cricket match at the Castle ground for over 50 years. During the match, ‘Kwik’ cricket activities were delivered next to the field for children to try out. The children taking part enjoyed and we had over 30 children giving participating.
Leinster U12 Tournament:
During the summer, we had for the second year running an Under 12 competition where the four councils (Fingal, Dublin City, South County Dublin and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown) competed against each other playing three matches in total. Fingal hosted one of the days at Ring Commons CC where the day was a great success and the hospitality was excellent as always.
Sports Centres:
We ran sessions for Corduff Sports Centre during the summer, in return they give us the use of their facilities for free to run cricket blitzes.
During July, we ran a session at Mulhuddart Community Centre where we had over 60 children participating. During the session, we played fun-filled games and taught the children the basics of batting, bowling and fielding.
‘Top Class’ Competitions:
We are continuing this new venture in National schools all over the county. The ‘Target Bowling ‘competition is once again a first in Ireland and while the ‘Top Class Throw’ and ‘Target Batting’ competition continues to run again. These competitions aims to promote cricket in local schools, create further interest in the game and encourage children to take up the game for the first time.
The competitions started in October 2016 and will run until April 2017. Over this period, we have started visiting local schools and observing the children’s bowling, throwing and batting styles, ability to ‘hit the stumps’ and how accurate are they at ball striking. Each class will have the opportunity to test their skills. For the throwing competition, two sets of stumps will be put against each other and the children will be positioned 15 yards away. Each pupil in the class will have the chance to throw once, over arm, and try to hit the stumps. After everyone has had a chance, we will take the percentage of hits as their overall score. The batting will be from 15 yards away where the ball will be hit off a tee. Each pupil will get the chance to hit the ball and try to get the ball through the cones in order to obtain points for their class. The new ‘Target Bowling’ competition will be run in the same format as the throwing.
We have all scores and leader boards posted on twitter (@fingalcricket) and regular updates on Fingal County Council, Cricket Leinster and Cricket Ireland social media. By the end of April next year, we will announce the winning classes. We will then surprise the class with a visit to their school and announce to them the exciting prize we have in store… How good is your class at cricket!
So far. there has been over 30 classes with over 700 children taking part.
Disability:
We ran a Table Cricket session for adults at St Michael’s House on Tuesday, June 28th where we had over 50 participants. We also ran a session for the children of St Michael’s House on Friday, August 28th with 30 children taking part. These two sessions were part of a sports day for the organisation and hopefully, we will do more of these sessions in 2017.
Girls Cricket Coaching:
We ran a four-week programme at Mount Sackville in October and November where we ran two sessions a week for the 5th class girls. These ran to create more of an interest in cricket and it was a great success, as more girls will start playing cricket on a regular basis. We hope that these activities will help the school to enter an extra team into the schools league next year. There were over 90 girls taking part in the four-week programme.
Cricket Sets:
Thanks to Fingal County Council, we received more of our own branded cricket sets that arrived in April. Twenty sets that will be distributed to different schools, clubs and organisations over Fingal.
Over the last few month sets have been delivered to Ringcommons CC, Castleknock NS, Mary Mother of Hope, St Philip’s NS, St George’s NS, Mount Sackville, St Patrick’s NS (Corduff), Fingal Community College and Scoil Chormaic CNS.
Youth Sports Grant:
Like in the previous years, we were in contact with all the clubs in Fingal by phone and e-mail to remind and help them get their completed application forms back to Fingal County Council in order to obtain a Youth Grant to go towards coaching in local schools. North County CC, Balbriggan CC, Ring Commons CC, Malahide CC, Tyrrelstown CC, Phoenix CC and Castleknock CC all received the grant this year.
Update on New Clubs:
Reinhardt Strydom
Cricket Development Officer
Cricket Leinster/Fingal County Council
January 2017