TOP SPORTS COACHING JOB FOR FORMER BRIGG HOCKEY PLAYER

BY PETER THOMPSON

A former Caistor Yarborough Academy student and Brigg hockey player has been promoted to a key development job in women's cricket.
Salliann Briggs (30) has been appointed to the role of England Women's Development Programme (EWDP) Under-19 Head Coach.
She has recently been Head Coach of the Loughborough University MCCU women’s programme boasting eight current England players as either students or alumni.
Salliann has been working with the EWDP U15 programme for over a year. 
Her main priority now is to ensure there is a growing talent pool of high quality players coming through the U19 programme creating a surplus of talent for the England Women’s Academy, which feeds the senior England Women team.
Speaking through the England and Wales Cricket Board website she said:  “The aim is to create an over-supply for the academy programme and make sure as much as possible that we’ve got players coming through that, when they do make the step up, it’s a smooth transition and they can adapt quite quickly to that environment.
“We’ve got to understand, from a female point of view, that there are players that develop later on,” she continued.
“We’ve got to make sure we give opportunities for those to come into the U19 programme at the top end, while also developing those coming through the U15 programme.”
Briggs is optimistic that women’s age-group cricket in England and Wales will continue to lead the rest of the world by example.
“I think the exceptional thing that the ECB do is that we’re pretty much the pioneers of pathway cricket for women and girls,” she added.
“England Under-19s have been around for a while whereas other nations are still developing their pathway towards senior teams and only few nations have got under-19 squads.
Brought up in Grimsby, Briggs was a high standard all round games player at school and developed her cricket at Grimsby Cricket club and at Caistor Cricket Club where her brother Peter is a former 1st team captain.
She played hockey for Brigg Colts and Brigg Ladies before leaving the area. 
Her own cricket developed further through the Yorkshire Ladies set up. She played several games, mainly as a batswoman with the England Development squad in 2008.