WOMEN’S CRICKET PLANNED FOR HALVERSTOWN!

It has taken a little while, 141 years to be precise, but Halverstown is now hoping to field an adult female cricket team. Recent years have seen an explosion in cricket at the club, moving from one league team and a social team to two league teams, a social team and five youth teams. The youth teams do include two girl’s teams: Under 13 and Under 15, both shared with North Kildare. However, Halverstown have now gone one step further and will field a women’s team in 2027.

To this end Secretary Stuart Conroy has been putting on some coaching sessions at the Halverstown cricket ground at Brannockstown. “The idea is to get enough numbers to form a team, have a couple of coaching sessions in and play our first women’s game in September”.  

Chairman Des Drumm added, “This has been a long time coming, but we feel now that the time is right. Moreover, Cricket Leinster is pushing for all clubs to have a women’s section, particularly since the Women’s national team is doing so well. It will also create a pathway for the next step up from the youth teams that we have. No experience of cricket is necessary!” 

The early turnouts have been great. “The support from Cricket Leinster, especially Naomi Scott-Hayward has been brilliant. She’s been there to assist with coaching and is organising a friendly match with the North Kildare Women’s team on September 20^th in Halverstown”.

The development support approach for women's & youth cricket adopted at Halverstown CC is fully aligned with how CL sees things developing at other clubs with similar growth ambitions. Cricket Leinster works with the club and the Local Authority (where possible) to fund some development/coaching resources at the club level who then take ownership for the long-term sustainability of the programme.