Caren the new coach at Monkstown club

MONKSTOWN hockey club have hired Irish assistant coach Jonny Caren as their new head coach as the club look to continue their run of three national league titles in succession.
Caren moves south from Belfast Harlequins where he has been based for the past number of season following a ten year stint in Australia.
There, he began coaching at club, provincial and state level with the New South Wales’ AHL men’s team. Since returning to Ireland, Caren has been working with IHA teams for almost six years, originally as part of the strength and conditioning programme.
More recently, he was head coach for the successful Irish Under-21 team, taking gold in the European B division in Lousada, Portugal last July and an advisor to the other national underage teams.
He has also regularly worked as the Irish men’s assistant coach and will be aiming to use his experience to extend Town’s reign as national champions into a fourth year, carrying on the work of Graham Shaw.
Caren will also be charged with building a development programme for the club’s youth academy. His squad will be bolstered by the return of Kyle Good following a year in Belgium with Dragons and they will look forward to playing at a new water-based pitch in Rathdown in the coming season,
One of the new coach’s first challenges is likely to be on preparation for the Euro Hockey League where Town have been handed a tough group but will see opportunity in the fact they have avoided a big dog from either Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium.
They have been placed in a three-team group with Spain’s third ranked side Egara and English runners-up East Grinstead for Round 1 which will be hosted in Hamburg from October 9-11, 2015; only the top finisher goes through to the KO16.
While Town are the group outsider, they will hope they can cause an upset against the Spanish side and an English outfit that has seen four of its top stars move on during the summer.