Two weeks ago Rush and Ireland Under 17 squad member Stephen Doheny arrived at Queen’s College, Taunton to start a trip to play schools cricket in England. Stephen is spending six weeks in total at this well know cricket school in the West of England.
Commenting to Cricket Leinster Youth (@leinsteryouth) after his arrival Stephen was clearly excited after his first few days at the school.
"I'm very excited about this trip and fortunate to be able to do it. I arrived several days ago and today I had my first training session with the lads, got to know the school and was shown around by a few local boys. Basically I'm going to be playing and coaching cricket for the whole time that I'm here, starting with the first game tomorrow against Millfield, a renowned cricketing school so it could be a challenging start!
Each weekend there's a school match but next week I'm also playing for a club side, Bishop’s Lydeards CC in the Somerset league and training also with Somerset CCC. With the school closed for a few days I will be acting as 12th man for Somerset in their 2nd X1 Championship game being played at Taunton Vale. The head of cricket at Queen’s is former Somerset professional Arul Suppiah who still has many close contacts at Somerset.
With all of this in mind I'm really looking forward to the whole trip and experiencing schools cricket in England and advancing my own game. Fingers crossed I'll get some runs and have a great time!"
This trip follows similar player placements facilitated by Cricket Leinster for Transition Year students to schools in South Africa, a programme that has been running now for over 10 years. Plans are currently in place to expand the programme with the highly renowned St Stithian’s in Johannesburg lined up to accommodate several boys from January 2016.
Stephen will return to Dublin just in time for the Leinster U17 series of games against the visiting Coventry & District squad during the second week in July before playing both NCU and North West U17’s later the same week at Coleraine.
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