South West Regional Development Centre update

The South West Regional Development Centre winter training programme has been up and running for ten weeks now and we caught up with Western Storm Head Coach, Trevor Griffin to see how things have been going.

First of all he outlined exactly what the SWRDC is.

“We have a squad of 14 players from across the South West region,” he explained. “The initiative is funded by the ECB and the purpose is to work with players who have been identified as having the potential to go on to an International pathway programme.

“Seven of the current players who were on the programme last year have been retained and the new intake has brought the average age down to about 15 or 16 years old. There is certainly some exciting potential within the group and that just goes to show the amount of hard work that the Counties are putting in to their age group programmes and pathways.”

How has the winter training been going?

“We’re coming towards the back end of our winter training now,” he said. “There are just a couple of weeks left in the the 12-week schedule and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to use the facilities at King’s College, the Centre of Excellence at the Cooper Associates County Ground and the University of Exeter.

“The players have also been playing some cage cricket. It’s a form of indoor cricket which took them out of their comfort zones. They went up to Birmingham recently to take part in a tournament and they all came away from that with big smiles on their faces having learned a lot.”

Does Trevor believe that the women’s game in the region is in good health?

“I’ve visited a number of age group sessions right across the region recently and I’ve seen a lot of skillful players. It’s great to see so many girls enjoying the game and wanting to get better.

“I would say that the future is very exciting in the South West when it comes to the women’s game, whatever that may look like moving forward.”