Glenanne name Shaw  as coach of first teams
Graham Shaw will coach Glennane ‘s men and women’s senior teams

Glenanne name Shaw as coach of first teams

GLENNANE Hockey Club have announced several key changes ahead of the upcoming season where they will be participating in the Leinster league.

The club is seeing widespread managerial and coaching changes across a variety of teams with perhaps the most notable being the arrival of Graham Shaw to coach the first team.

His role will be to coach the men and women’s senior team and will almost be acting as a coach to the coaches of those teams.

A former Irish international who broke into hockey as well as spent the bulk of his playing career with Glenanne.

An international with over 150 appearances for Ireland, Graham is not only an extremely accomplished player but has been successful on the coaching side of things also.

His most notable accomplishment perhaps being guiding the Ireland women’s team to a silver medal at the 2018 World Cup. He has also been the head coach of the new zealand womens national team for the last number of years.

President of Glenanne Paul Bastable spoke on the appointment.

“We’re just thrilled to have Graham, probably Ireland’s leading hockey coach, back and focused in Glenanne.

‘It’s credit to him that he’s giving back so much to the club.

‘We’re thrilled to have him back and it’ll be a boost for the club, for the coaches and he’ll have a massive contribution for our junior section also.

‘Having a coach back of that nature is tremendous and really exciting for us as we look to reset ourselves as a club.”

“In terms of our coaching infrastructure we have what I believe to be the Premier coaching line up in terms of Leinster Division 1 Hockey, Obviously you still have Leinster clubs playing in the EY league which is the national competition but Leinster Senior Hockey I believe we have the strongest line up.

Alongside the arrival of Graham Shaw the men’s coaching staff will include the likes of Mark Lambe and Bernard Dunne who have had huge success in coaching Glenanne’s women’s teams over the past few years. Andy Sparshott, Trish O’Donoghue, Oran Dunne and Paul Kennedy make up the women’s coaching team.

The other major development of Glenanne ahead of the upcoming season is the relocation of the team from St Andrews school to its original founding place of St Marks in Tallaght. Speaking of the switch back President Paul Bastable commented.

“We feel that’s the right thing and we feel like that will help with a sense of cohesion in the club. Obviously we’ve been paying to rent the pitch in Andrews and our mindset now is we want to invest those resources in our underage structures and coaching. We don’t want to be a hockey club in Tallaght, we want to be Tallaght’s hockey club.”