Formed in 1967, Cork Harlequins has been very family orientated and many of our members play with their sons on a weekly basis. We play in the Senior, Junior and Minor divisions of the Munster Cricket Union leagues.
Cork Harlequins Cricket Club
Harlequin Park,
Farmers Cross,
Cork.
Cork Harlequins Cricket Club is one of the most successful and active clubs in the Munster Cricket Union. Perched on top of a hill overlooking Cork city and adjacent to Cork Airport, Cork Harlequins’ ground in Farmers Cross is home to our large, vibrant, inclusive and very successful cricket club.
From a complement of around 60 adult players, Cork Harlequins currently fields six adult teams, with two first teams, one in the MCU Premier Division and the other in Leinster Division 4, as well as second, third, fourth and fifth teams in MCU leagues and cups. We also have a flourishing youth section with 90 members, running from our softball Academy, which trains on a Monday night, to our U13s, U15s and U17s, who train on a Friday night.
These youth players participate in Munster leagues at U13, U15 and U17 level as well as regularly representing Munster in Interprovincial competitions with over 40 Harlequins’ players representing Munster at Interprovincial level since 2007 and 4 going on to achieve international youth honours for Ireland.
The 2000s have been the most successful period in the club’s history. In the last 23 years we have won the MCU Premier Division title five times (2002, 2007, 2009, 2012 and 2022) and the Munster Senior Cup twice (2011 and 2022). The club reached the high point of its history in the early 2020s with successive appearances in the national final of the Cricket Ireland T20 cup. And the peak of our achievement was our 2022 treble of MCU Premier League, Senior Cup and T20 titles achieved by a team whose average age was in the low twenties and half of whom were products of our own youth academy. The icing on the cake for that year was the chance to play in front of a large partisan crowd, proudly wearing the club’s livery of red and black, in a sunny, festive Mardyke ground, to take on the might of Belfast’s CIYMS in Cricket Ireland’s T20 cup final.
How we got to that a day is the story of long and patient work by a group of dedicated club members to develop a club from the ground up. Founded in 1967 as an offshoot of Cork Harlequins Hockey Club, for many years Cork Harlequins lived in the shadow of larger and more successful clubs in the Munster Cricket Union.
By 1990, the club had two adult teams – a Senior team and a Taverners team – and a small complement of youth members. Membership was also small, falling as low as 17 towards the end of the 90s, but, nevertheless, the club always had a family atmosphere, with players mostly crossing over from the Hockey Section, and many coming from multiple generations of the same family. Since then, it has been our unique achievement to combine this friendly family atmosphere with increasing professionalism on the pitch and sustained improvement in our amenities and organisation off the pitch.
Club membership began to increase around the year 2000 and by the early 2000s the number of adult teams had increased to three. From 2005 onwards, the youth section began to expand on the back of a sustained recruitment drive. The youth section was given a huge boost by Ireland’s victories in the 2007 World Cup with nearly 100 young players attending the first training session of that season. That event set the tone for and gave impetus to the other unique feature of Cork Harlequins’ ethos: its dedication to producing and promoting its own players from its youth section through to the highest level of its first team.
So, when in 2009, Cork Harlequins lost half its first team squad after the worldwide financial crisis of that year, the club’s committee took the momentous decision to put the best of their youth players straight into the first team. For a couple of seasons our first team consisted of a complement of adults plus a group of talented 12 and 13 year olds. Inevitably this led to a couple of seasons of heavy defeats, but the gamble paid off in 2011 when we won the MCU Senior Cup, with one of our 14 year olds scoring a hundred, and in the following year we won the MCU Premier League title. This experience set the template for our youth policy: patient investment in the development of youth and acceptance of the reality that there could be no gain without pain. This policy bore fruit for the second time when our next generation of youth players won the treble in 2022.
Cork Harlequins can boast of some of the best facilities in the Munster Cricket Union. We are one of only two Munster Senior League clubs to play on grass wickets and our pitch is one of the best in the country. Our wickets tend to be flat and true, and in good summer conditions our outfield is like lightening, as quick as any in the country. These conditions encourage our players to develop orthodox cricket techniques and they reward the excellence that consequently is often on display.
Cork Harlequins’ team of grounds people have worked hard over the last few years to raise the standard of our pitch by annual loaming, and to sustain the quality of our outfield by maintenance and curatorship. We have installed new sight screens, purchased a new heavy roller and have the use of a high quality electric scoreboard, so we can offer our members a high quality playing experience. Our efforts in this regard are about to be crowned by the installation in this midsummer of a set of three bay nets. Once these are up and running, we will be able to guarantee our members training and playing conditions that will be as good if not better than any in the Munster Province.
And in the winter months, Cork Harlequins is the only club in the MCU to have access to its own indoor nets. We use three bays of nets permanently installed in the gymnasium of the neighbouring Douglas Community School for regular sessions for both youth and adult players throughout the off season.
We also believe strongly in cricket’s traditions of hospitality. We offer our visitors an attractively decorated bar and the usual essential amenities of parking and toilets. Our members love to cater for members and visitors and we draw on the diverse ethnic character of our members to provide rich and enjoyable teas. From week to week, our hospitality may include an Indian biryani, a halal curry or a South African stew. And traditional Irish scones and jam are omnipresent as well as the club’s legendary lemon drizzle cake!
This is another essential component of our club ethos that emphasises high standards both on and off the pitch; but always in the context of a family atmosphere in which all our members are encouraged to flourish and to contribute to the flourishing of our club, in which opposition players and supporters are always welcome and in which the club willingly accepts new membership applications within the bounds of the numbers that it can sustain.
All of this reflects our experience of successfully building a club. In 2008, Cork Harlequins had three adult teams drawing on a pool of 44 adult players and 2 youth players. Now, in 2024, six Harlequins adult teams are drawing on a pool of 80 players, 20 of whom are current youth section players. Of the remaining 60, 20 have come through our youth section, so 50% of the pool of players for our adult teams have been produced by our youth section. Of our 6 team captains in 2024, 2 were products of our youth section and 2 had players in our youth section. Our very active club committee also consists largely of members who have seen their children emerge as fully-fledged club players.
This is a tribute to the skill and dedication of our team of youth coaches, who for the last 15 years have worked tirelessly – summer and winter, outdoors and indoors, in sunshine and in wind and rain – to instil in each succeeding generation of Cork Harlequins players the technical, tactical and mental skills required to create winning teams. Cork Harlequins is very fortunate to have at its disposal some of the most highly qualified and experienced coaches in the country and they selflessly offer their time and insights to the players who attend their sessions.
So, our club has built its success on openness, friendliness, inclusivity, diversity, professionalism, attention to detail and competitiveness. We have dedicated ourselves to creating the very best facility for the very best players in Munster. We are ambitious to continue developing our club and aspire to reach the highest levels possible for us in Irish cricket. Even the rain won’t stop us!
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