In 2011 I had just finished up the season coaching the Karori Cricket Club in Wellington. While reflecting on the last two seasons with the club the team had been very successful and I felt I was at a crossroads in terms of what to do next as a coach.

Is coaching club cricket going to progress my career as a high-performance coach? Unsure, but probably not. Did I want to pursue a career as a high-performance coach? Yes. Was I willing to do whatever it takes to help make this achievable? Yes.

These questions required more thought and I enlisted some trusted family, collegues and friends to get their opinions on what the next steps could look like. I was being honest with people as to my aspirations and I needed honesty back to insure I made the right decision for my future.

The options I got from these discussions where:

1.   Stay in my job at Cricket Wellington and continue doing coaching part-time

2.   Resign from my job and look for opportunities to coach overseas

3.   Find a coaching role within Wellington or New Zealand that is fulltime

The overwhelming advice and support I got was that if I was serious enough about what I wanted to achieve then only numbers 2 and 3 where options. This is what my gut was also telling me and having these people back that up and support that made the upcoming hard decisions easier to make.

So, the first step was I needed to resign from my position with Cricket Wellington as the Mana Centre Manager.

I looked at other roles within New Zealand and they were of equal value to what I was currently doing so this would have no impact on me gaining more experience. There are only a limited number of roles at the High-Performance level in New Zealand which meant the only thing to do for me to progress as a coach was to look overseas and gain some quality experience.

Around this time I had an opportunity presented to me to coach a club team in Leiden, Holland. The Ajax Cricket Club. I jumped at this opportunity after the advice given and felt comfortable but nervous as to what the future held for me.

As much as I could not wait to get over there and do a six-month stint in a new environment, at the back of my head I always had the thought that after the six months I have no job.

All of this may seem like an easy decision at face value given my aspirations however sacrificing full-time employment, money, family, friends and going into a complete unknown does take you out of your comfort zone. A lot of coaches talk about wanting to achieve certain things but not many are willing to put this into action and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve their goals. It’s a true test of how much you want something.

If you really want it you will make it happen and make the sacrifices needed. No excuses.

I could have quite easily chosen to stay in Wellington and go through the same thing year after year of coaching a club team and coaching a rep team. This was not going to get me where I wanted though. I never played the game at the highest level so gaining more experience as a coach was what I needed and a new environment was going to give me that.

I could see these six months overseas were going to be very enjoyable and challenging at the same time. My thoughts would need to stay positive instead of thinking about the decisions I’ve made and the potential ramifications for the future.

I knew I would need to stay in the present and that would help me relax and enjoy the experience of being overseas and chasing my dreams.

We all naturally want to be successful, and lots of people will take short cuts as it’s an easy option, but you can never take away the effort of hard work, discipline and sacrifice. This was an important lesson I took away from making these tough decisions for my future.

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