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At the end of January Ireland's coach education system saw a progression into a new era. Week 1 of the first ever UKCC ECB Level 3 course that has been hosted by a country outside of the ECB and ICC-Europe was run. The tutors included former England Assistant Coach and Cricket Ireland Performance Director, Mark Garaway; former Yorkshire and current ECB High Performance wicket-keeper coach Simon Guy; former First-Class player and England U19 Manager between 2004 and 2014, John Abrahams; Director of Elite Coach Development at the ECB, Gordon Lord; Gloucestershire CCC Strength and Conditioning Coach, Chris Bodman; and Andy Tennant, Performance Director at Cricket Scotland.

Fourteen Irish coaches took part in this course, of which four were from the Leinster region. Throughout the first week they worked on discovering more about themselves and their own coaching philosophies, before taking part in sessions on batting, fielding, wicketkeeping, captaincy and strength and conditioning. Many of the videos can be seen on the Cricket Ireland Coaches Association (CICA) Facebook page: CLICK HERE. The coaches will now begin to undertake a couple of months of work based on coaching players on a 1:1 basis and also team-based coaching ahead of Module Two in April.

In Module Two, the participants will take part in workshops on how players acquire skills, the psychology associated with cricket and seam/fast bowling.

The UKCC ECB Level 3 course helps to complete a pathway for coach development within the country from support coaches, to club coaches, to coaches in high performance environments.

As Cricket Ireland have said - \"it has been a great privilege to be able to host this event and create opportunities for some of our top Level 2 coaches in the country to further develop their coaching skills and hopefully challenge existing ideas they had but also reinforce the great work that they are already doing. We look forward to speaking to these coaches at the end of Module Two to find out what are the main things that they will take away from the course and if they would recommend it to others.\"

The Coaching Pathway is shown to the left here. The Level 3 fits in with 'Elite Courses'. Cricket Ireland are running a UKCC ECB Level 2 Certificate in Coaching Young People and Adults course in the Leinster region (CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS).