One of the great stories of this summer was the forming of a ladies cricket team in Tyrrelstown, Dublin 15. Ladies from the local community joined up and started playing cricket for the first time. They had great fun and learned a lot about the game training every Monday night. This is great news for cricket development in Fingal and hopefully they will inspire more ladies to start playing cricket and in time partake in the Leinster ladies leagues. Congratulations are also due to the girls from Tyrrelstown cricket team on winning the beach cricket tournament in Bettystown.
Tyrellstown cricket ladies member Claire Clifford was very upbeat with the activities held during the summer and has bigger plans in place for next season.
‘The Tyrrelstown Ladies Cricket team formed in June 2011 following on from the establishment of Tyrrelstown Cricket Club earlier in the year. As none of the players had any prior experience playing cricket we had to start with the very basics to learn the skills and of course the rules. Members of the men’s team volunteered to coach us and we now have about ten regular players.
We were delighted to be able to enter a team in the Beach Cricket Ireland festival held in Bettystown. The team thoroughly enjoyed this event. It was well organised and most importantly a lot of fun. As new players this was a super event for us to participate in for our first cooperative outing and we were thrilled to go on and win the competition!
With the unpredictable weather we have ceased training for the winter but are already looking forward to next year and being able to play for the full season. We hope to recruit more new players and also arrange some challenge matches against other women's teams with a view to eventually being able to develop a league team.’
Fingal Co Co and Leinster cricket have developed a very close working relationship in recent years. A new ground was opened at Porterstown (Clonee CC) in April and plans are at an advanced stage to open new cricket specific grounds at both Swords (Newbridge Park) and Tyrellstown itself in the coming 12 months.