Danske Bank Mageean Cup final: St Mary’s CBS v St Louis', Ballymena (Friday, 7.30pm, The Dub, Belfast)
WHAT a contrast between the Mageean Cup tradition in the two schools that contest Friday's final at the Dub.
St Mary’s have dominated the competition, winning 29 of the 53 finals to date, while St Louis', Ballymena have only taken one title (1988) and made just one other final appearance. That was all of 19 seasons ago, when they fell to St Mary’s in Casement Park, the second win of an eventual five in-a-row for the west Belfast seat of learning.
This year, the form teams have reached the final. Both St Mary’s and St Louis' topped their respective groups to gain an automatic ticket into the semi-finals.
Last weekend, the pair held their nerves to make it through to Friday's final, St Mary’s shooting two points in injury-time to dethrone three in-a-row chasing Cross and Passion, 1-10 to 0-11, while St Louis' survived a free-taking examination against St Patrick’s, Maghera, 1-18 to 1-14.
They have two excellent dead-ball specialists in Tír na nÓg’s Seán Duffin, the long-range expert with nine scores against Maghera, and Loughgiel’s James McNaughton (0-6), who operates closer to their opponents’ goal. They also feature two of last year’s Ulster Colleges’ Allstar team – Cathal McMullan at centre half-back and Keelan Molloy at centre-forward. Indeed, they have a fairly strong all-round squad, with quite a smattering from the Dunloy team that eclipsed the Antrim minor title last month.
St Mary’s seem to be coming through a year early. They didn’t feature too prominently in the Foresters’ Cup last year – but ran away with that title earlier this year.
Eight of that team – defenders Dominic McEnhill, Niall Crossan, Odhrán McKenna and Nathan Gibson, Colm McLarnon at midfield and forwards Shea Shannon, CJ McKenna and Tiarnán Murphy – all started against Ballycastle last Saturday, with another, Aidan O’Brien, coming in to score the injury-time point that broke the deadlock.
Ballycastle have proved a very difficult team to beat over the last few seasons. That St Mary’s stood toe-to-toe with them into injury-time before killing them off will have given the city side a huge lift. But also impressive was St Louis’ resilience against Maghera, another of those teams that are hard to put away.
For most of the past decade, Mageean Cup finals have provided top-class entertainment and been decided in the last five minutes – tense, tough-tackling but highly disciplined affairs between two determined teams. This final should follow that script, although it also has the potential to be fairly open and even high-scoring, as there is a lot of pace and scoring power in both forward lines.
If the discipline drops, free-takers like Duffin and McNaughton for St Louis' and Ronan Beattie for St Mary’s can step into the limelight. The destination of this season’s title might just come down to accuracy from these dead-ball chances as the clock ticks away.
TEAM NEWS
St Mary’s: P Carlin, D McEnhill, C Gallagher, N Crossan, O McKenna, N Gibson, C Carson, D Clarke, C McLarnon, S Maxwell, R Beattie, J Darragh, S Shannon, CJ McKenna, T Murphy.
St Louis': R Elliott, C Rice, D Martin, S McKinley, C Ferris, C McMullan, R McGarry, S Duffin, E O’Neill, R Graham, K Molloy, C Cunning, C Elliott, J McNaughton, S Elliott.
