Why Alex O’Dowd is on this page

Alexander Patrick O’Dowd (born 25 February 1967) is a New Zealand rugby union coach and former first-class cricketer with a long and unusually international career across the two codes. As of 2019 he is assistant coach with Nottingham Rugby Club in the English Championship; previously he coached the North Harbour Mitre 10 Cup side at home in New Zealand and held the head-coach role with the Netherlands national rugby team.

As a right-handed batsman, O’Dowd made seventeen appearances in first-class cricket — fourteen for Auckland between 1991 and the end of 1993 and three more for Northern Districts in 1996-97. He scored his only first-class century in just his second match, a 113 against Canterbury in 1992, and briefly captained Auckland. From 1991 he spent several seasons as a player-coach in the Netherlands with Hoofdklasse club HBS Craeyenhout, the relationship that would eventually shape his coaching career and his family’s cricketing future.

O’Dowd’s son, Max O’Dowd, also plays cricket; holding a Dutch passport through his father’s long Dutch residency, Max made his debut for the Netherlands national side in 2015 and has gone on to play in multiple ICC tournaments for the Dutch.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Alex O’Dowd.
• Wikidata Q4717570.

Heritage notes

Family root: diaspora-likely.

The directory threads Alex O’Dowd back to the Ó Dubhda clan story via the surname-variants reality — the same family carried these spellings as it scattered. See the septs and the diaspora for the wider pattern, or the Clan DNA Project for the genetic connections being mapped now.