Danske Bank Mageean Cup semi-final
Cross & Passion, Ballycastle v St Patrick’s, Maghera (Friday, Portglenone, 5pm)
IT’S the competition favourites Cross & Passion, Ballycastle against the school mostly likely to spring a knock-out shock year after year in tonight’s semi-final of the Danske Bank Mageean Cup.
The pair met in a first-round tie in Loughgiel back in the first week of October and CPC won by an impressive 4-27 to 0-15.
While both teams were short key players due to club competitions in their respective counties, that was still a very impressive victory.
Maghera also lost their other group game to St Killian’s, but looked a lot more competitive. In their last game, the quarter-final in Owenbeg against Gaelcholáiste Dhoire, they seemed to be at a different level altogether – but it remains to be seen this evening if that higher level is good enough to spring a sting to Ballycastle’s title aspirations.
Pádraig O’Kane was very dominant at full-back against Gaelcholáiste and was prepared to charge out of defence to set up scores or even go for points from distance.
All over the pitch there was good movement from Maghera, plenty of off-the-shoulder running in a dominant quarter-final display. But they also accumulated 15 wides. Against CPC that would be fatal.
That opening day game between the two schools saw CPC’s full-forward line of Conor Donnelly, Caeden Crawford and Oisin McCallin land a combined 3-14, while Roan McGarry, Paudie Martin and Ronan Fitzgerald are also well capable of scoring half-a-dozen points each in a game.
Almost the entire Cross & Passion team played some part in last year’s final and ran St Killian’s pretty close, while Maghera are fairly dependent on a younger team that captured the Foresters’ Cup back in the spring.
There is little doubt that Maghera will be underdogs coming into this game. They will hope that the extra eight weeks since their first meeting will have seen the pace of the sliotar slowed down on the late autumn surfaces and that this will give them a better chance of upsetting the odds.
The first semi-final between St Killian’s, Garron Tower and St Louis’, Ballymena has already been postponed twice this week and will now take place in Cushendall next Tuesday (2pm)
Verdict No-one, only perhaps Maghera themselves, expects them to overturn a first round victory by 24 points.
