Junior Cricket in Lismore – a call for players and coaches
2019 has been a success in the continued recovery of Lismore Cricket Club. We have fielded two adult teams and increased participation in the club. It is heartening to see interest out there, and we must look to developing youth cricket and giving the game to the next generation of players.
To give a brief summary, there was a traditionally strong junior setup back in Lismore since the early 2000’s but it fell away recent years due to lack of matches and lack of coaches. There was no proper youth setup here in 2017 and when the current administration returned to helping out run the club in 2018, it was done on an ‘ad-hoc’ basis.
Over the summer of 2019, the Committee have worked to get the administration right first – that meant getting the proper safeguarding and child safety policies in place to ensure that the club is legally correct and protected. We have also started to host training sessions and got junior cricket matches played in Lismore last year. We had two players go on to represent Munster at U-15 and U-17 age groups.
At the moment, we have one coach (Ben) who runs the underage cricket and trains the Colts (between 13 and 18), who is assisted by parents. We have no U-13 set up. So this is a call out to anyone willing to give a hand and get primary school cricket up and running next year.
The good news is that we could have a decent cohort of players between 8 and 13 years of age that we can build a team around. The Club is prepared to put the effort in to support this age group, but need a bit of help and support to make it happen.