Women & Girls Cricket – Rush CC

Rush’s first Women’s side was started in 1938, with the first phase of Women’s cricket in Leinster. A team was established again in 1977 and since then Rush Cricket Club has consistently had women’s and girls’ teams involved in Leinster leagues. Our first player to get their full Irish cap was Collette McGuinness in 1987 followed by several players including Catriona Beggs and Carole McGuire. 

Our current Women’s XI has been successfully competing in the Sprint Coatings Division 2 for the past four years, with the League title almost within reach.

The team is made up of both experienced players and youth players and is captained by our opening bowler, Emma Ryan. I caught up with Emma to ask her what her ambitions are for the team.

Emma described her hopes for women’s cricket at Rush CC as being “to build the team into a very strong side that will compete at a senior level. We would also love to see a lot of the girls coming through to play at Super 50 and International level.”

The Rush CC Women’s 2nd XI team is a young and developing side, that has grown up playing with each other since U11s. They have a great team spirit, are a very supportive group and have been improving consistently since joining the Sprint Coatings Division 3 in 2018.

This development team has been feeding into the Women’s 1^st team successes in the Sprint Coatings Division 2. Despite being a relatively young and inexperienced side (the oldest player being just 19), the team has reached the top 4 in Division 3 each year.

Underage Girls cricket is also very vibrant at Rush CC with the club fielding teams at Girls Minors, Juniors and Colts levels. Each team is allocated its own dedicated evening for training at the club. The Colts team also join with the Women’s Seconds as they are mostly the same group of girls training together.

The Colts reached their League Final last year and also made the Semi-Final of the Cup competition, losing to strong YM and Phoenix sides.

The Juniors have a strong side at the moment with a number of girls playing all the way up to the Women’s first team.

The Minors are our youngest side and are learning lots of new skills and having great fun playing their matches. Rush is proud to have some players as young as 7 and 8 getting the opportunity to bat and bowl. The youngest group of 4 to 11-year-olds all train on a Friday evening with help from a few of our older youth players. It is great to have role models for the younger players and for them to get to know players who will probably be team-mates at some stage in the future!

Siobhan McBennett is Club President at Rush CC and spoke of her delight with all the progress on the Youth side – “I believe in building strong communities through Sport and that we foster youth, sportsmanship, excellence and professionalism on the field and in the community. My ideal would be that we provide a place for children and adults to play the level of cricket that they enjoy and to which they aspire. In the perfect world we would field teams at every level – adult and underage!’

Author: Rebecca Gough, Rush Cricket Club