Danske Bank Mageean Cup final: Tuesday, 7.30pm in the Dub Arena: St Patrick’s, Maghera v An Dún
A REPEAT of last year’s Danske Bank Mageean Cup final is on offer in south Belfast this evening at the Dub Arena.
Last year St Patrick’s, Maghera justified their pre-final favourites’ tag by taking out the combination team from the Mournes on a 1-19 to 2-12 score-line.
However a repeat line-up in the final this season didn’t look too good for either team early last month when each finished in third place in their respective qualification groups.
For their quarter-final with St Killian’s, Garron Tower, An Dún fielded five forwards (Padraig Dorrian is the odd-man-out) who played in last year’s final as did defenders Matthew McAreavey and John Hughes.
That experience, and the pace and accuracy of their attack, left first St Killian’s and then a highly-rated Cross and Passion, Ballycastle side trailing in their wake and they were comfortable qualifiers for the final fully three and a half weeks ago.
St Patrick’s struggled to get past St Mary’s, CBGS Belfast in their quarter-final, with just two players, Fintan Bradley with 1-13 and Tiarnan McHugh (2-0), hitting the target – and all Bradley’s points came from frees in a 3-13 to 2-14 win.
However the semi-final against St Louis, Ballymena was delayed until last Tuesday and it allowed Paul Hughes the space to carry out some surgery. Into defence came PJ McAleese with Ryan McGill and Shea Cassidy promoted from the bench to flank Tiarnan McHugh at full-forward.
The end result was a huge semi-final performance from the whole team.
McHugh and Bradley were still the scoring focus, although 2-3 from young Cassidy certainly justified his inclusion and this was the difference on the score-board as well with Ballymena’s hopes of a third title crashing to earth on a 3-13 to 2-7 score-line.
Maghera dominated the game with their physical presence in every tackle.
They were able to crowd midfield and emerge time and again with the sliotar, often off-loading with a reverse hand-pass for a colleague to deliver the diagonal pass to beat the sweeper in front of McHugh.
On other occasions high ball was pumped in on top of the big Kevin Lymch’s forward who is a handful for any defender as An Dún full-back Matthew McAreavey found out on Sunday when the pair were in close quarters in the Leadon Timberframes Ulster minor club semi-final in Ballinascreen.
Bradley has been deadly accurate from frees, and distance is not an obstacle to the Lavey attacker as he landed two from inside his own half last week against St Louis.
Cassidy impressed as well, both in his foraging and support for McHugh as much as for the 2-3 he landed himself.
And those two knock-out games proved that Maghera work hard as a team.
They have some outstanding individuals, but the team plays as a unit.
That is not to say that their defenders don’t concede frees; they do because they commit totally to every single tackle.
Against both St Mary’s and St Louis they were able to negate the influence of the couple or three key attackers and control the others.
However An Dún, in their knock-out games, have shown that all six players in their forward division have pace, skill and accuracy and all six, plus midfielder Phelim Savage had raised flags before half-time in each game.
Savage has been a key player this season for his club’s senior team as well as for An Dún.
Indeed he negated the impact of Slaughtneil’s Chrissy McKaigue as Ballycran reached the Ulster club final.
However on Sunday Savage finished on the losing side in Armagh for Ballycran as did Bredagh’s Sean Hughes, Matthew McAreavey and Niall McFarland in the minor semi-final in Draperstown against McHugh’s Dungiven side.
However, provided the Down boys can put their club disappointment behind them, they should have a great chance of writing their county’s name on the Mageean Cup for the first time – but only if they can match Maghera’s intensity.
