Abbey and St Mary’s exit MacRory

Danske Bank MacRory Cup Play Offs
St Patrick’s Armagh 6-9 Abbey CBS 1-14

There are times in games that you need a bit of luck and it’s fair to say that neither of the teams that departed the Danske Bank MacRory Cup in play-offs yesterday got much of a rub of the green.
Abbey CBS hit the first two points of their game in Pearse Óg Park through Billy Campbell and Eoin Carr, but were still 2-3 to 0-3 down after ten minutes’ play with Ben Toal and Michael McGleenan finding the net.
Still Abbey battled back with the next five scores, including three from Ruairí McCormick to narrow the deficit to 2-3 to 0-8. Then Toal struck again, followed soon after by Justin Kieran and Armagh led by 4-5 to 0-10 after an eventful first half.
Lorcan Forde’s goal again pulled the Abbey back a little at 4-6 to 1-11, but immediately Dillon Horsfield hit back with Armagh’s fifth goal and soon after Michael Conroy made it six as St Patrick’s lined up the other Newry school, St Colman’s, in a quarter-final play-off in January.
Things began to spiral out of the control of St Mary’s CBGS during the third quarter of their play-off against St Patrick’s Cavan in Killygarry.
Despite a goal from Cian McGovern in the 15th minute, and a fair bit of Cavan dominance in the opening half, a huge shift from Eoin McMenamin, Conal Fagan and Niall Ward was keeping St Mary’s in contention at the break, trailing by 1-5 to 0-4.
Cavan tagged on a few points on the re-start, but McMenamin hit back with a goal for St Mary’s before the game got away from them with Ward picking up a black card, quickly followed by reds for Matthew Mallon and Paddy Doyle. In the middle of this McMenamin smashed a shot off the crossbar and to add salt to the wounds Dominic McEnhill then blazed a 47th minute penalty word of the target.
A goal would have closed the game to three points, 1-10 to 2-4, but sub Jack Trainor killed off any remaining hope the 13 men had with a second Cavan goal.
Trainor, a Rannafast Cup winner on Saturday against St Michael’s Enniskillen, was joined on the score-board by two other Rannafast heroes, Aaron McManus and Oisin Brady, and they will renew rivalry now with Enniskillen in January for a place in the MacRory Cup quarter-finals
St Patrick’s Armagh : Ben Toal 2-0, Michael Conory 1-2, Justin Kieran 1-2, Michael McGleenan 1-1, Dillon Horsfield 1-0, Seamus Muldoon 0-3, James McCoy 0-1.
Abbey CBS : Lorcan Forde 1-0, Ruairí McCormick 0-5, Cathal Gorman 0-2, John McGovern 0-2, Eoin Carr 0-1, Billy Campbell 0-1, Jamie Lynch 0-1, Jamie Martin 0-1, Aaron Laverty 0-1.
St Patrick’s Cavan 2-13 St Mary’s CBGS Belfast 1-4
St Patrick’s Cavan : Jack Treanor 1-2, Cian McGovern 1-1, Ruairi Curran 0-3, Thomas Smith 0-3 frees, Cian Boylan 0-1, Aaron McManus 0-1, Oisin Brady 0-1.
St Mary’s : Eoin McMenamin 1-1, Dominic McEnhill 0-3 frees