BELLAGHY captain Peter Diamond has lost his battle for fitness ahead of Sunday’s Ulster club championship final against Crossmaglen.
Diamond picked up a hamstring injury last weekend and Bellaghy boss Peter Doherty confirmed last night that the cornerback would not be in the starting line-up for Clones on Sunday.
“Peter is very disappointed not to have made it and obviously he’s a big loss to the team, but we have good replacements and we’ll try not to let this setback annoy us,” he said.
Half-forward Gareth Doherty is now to keep the captain’s armband for the final.
Bellaghy: K O’Neill, P Downey, D O’Neill, C McNally, Paul Diamond, K Diamond, G McPeake, D Quinn, J Mulholland, P Scullion, B Lee, G Doherty, E Cassidy, D Cassidy, J Cassidy.
UUJ enjoyed and five point win over Sligo RTC (1-10 to 1-5) in the Divsion Three Higher Education League yesterday.
Raymond O’Hagan hit a vital goal for the local students, while Kieran Stewart and Kieran Hinphey tortured the Sligo defence, hitting nine points between them.
The win keeps the ‘Poly’ in with a chance of gaining league honours as the face a crunch game with St Pat’s Drumcondra.
GLENTORAN gave Newry Town a cash boost this week, when officials from the east Belfast club handed over their gate receipts following the Calor County Antrim Shield tie at the Showgrounds.
Glentoran brought a large support to the game and their arrival brought some fair weather fans from the ‘Town’ to the game.
The Glens progressed in the competition, winning 5-0.
“It was a bolt out of the blue when Glentoran handed us over their half of the gate,” said Newry secretary Eamon Cole.
IMMACULATA’S Martin Lindsay won his third bout for Ulster against English ABA opposition schoolboy’s recently but saw his Irish colleagues go down 8-6.
Martin, Tony Lyness and Gerard Smith won Ulster Juvenile titles for their club in Ballymena recently and the trio are developing into real crowd pleasers.
RONAN McGarrity and Brian Gormley have been drafted back into the Tyrone team to face Meath in the crunch division one encounter at Omagh.
Moy’s Terence O’Neill has recovered from a slight injury and also returns to the squad.
Tyrone: J Cassidy, P Devlin, P O’Neill, R Mc Garrity, P Donnelly, F Logan, N Donnelly, J Gormley, E Kilpatrick, B Dooher, S McCallan, A Cush, B Gormley, G Cavlan, C McBride.
CROSSMAGLEN manager Joe Kernan will delay naming his starting 15 until Sunday morning.
His only injury concern is over fullback Donal Murtagh who is expected at least to start the game.
Murtagh limped off in Cross’ semi-final win over Castleblayney with a hip injury and if he fails a fitness test over the weekend, Tony McEntee will move from centre-half-forward to plug the gap in defence.
ULSTER Schoolboys, Ronan O’Leary, the 6ft 5” Derry student, and St Malachy’s College stars Paul Dunlop and Peter Canavan, selected from last year’s tournament, will make their international basketball debuts in the new year following a year of intensive training.
