A COLWYN Bay school will once again host a thriving national coaching initiative throughout the winter months.

The facilities at Rydal Penrhos will be the venue for the Marylebone Cricket Club Foundation Hub’s North Wales base, which offers high-quality cricket coaching to talented children in the state school system, who have displayed the potential to become good cricketers.

The MCC will fund three coaches for 25 two-hour sessions at the school, which equates to a session every week in the off-season.

The day-to-day running of each Hub is left to a local manager, who runs local trials to identify talented children and who oversees the coaching sessions, which are open to male and female players from state schools across North Wales.

This is the fourth successive year that the MCC will be using Rydal Penrhos as their venue for the initiative, which has gone from strength-to-strength since its inception.

The scheme is available to players who qualify for U13 and U15 levels and it has already seen success in the form of Welsh youth international Owen Reilly, who is now a Sixth Form pupil at the school and recently turned out for the national side in a fixture against the MCC.

The Hubs are put together, funded and mentored by the MCC Foundation, and further details on how to apply will be released during the summer.