Holy Trinity deliver another MacRory shock

Holy Trinity Cookstown 1-12 St Michael’s Enniskillen 1-7

From Kevin Kelly in Derrygonnelly

Holy Trinity Cookstown ended the reign of MacRory and Hogan Cup champions St Michael’s Enniskillen thanks to a richly deserved five points’ success at Derrygonnelly on Saturday afternoon.

The Tyrone school recovered from the setback of conceding an early goal to produce a superb display, especially in the second half. With the wind at their backs the winners held a narrow two points’ advantage but after the break they restricted their opponents to just five scores with three of those coming in the closing five minutes.

The holders got off to the perfect start when Ronan McHugh burst through the centre of the Holy Trinity defence to blast the ball to the roof of the net with only two minutes gone on the clock.

The winners though were right back in the game by the end of the opening quarter thanks to a trio of successful frees from man of the match Mark Devlin.

Conor O’Brien and defender Josh Largo-Ellis had points for the holders but a brace from Pascal McClure either side of efforts from Mark and Niall Devlin left Holy Trinity leading 0-7 to 1-2 at the break.

A brilliant free from keeper Shay Lawn extended Holy Trinity’s advantage on the restart before St Michael’s lost Oliver Hughes Jordan to a black card. Holy Trinity made good use of the extra man with Devlin, McClure and Shea Quinn all tagging on points.

St Michael’s failed to register in the third quarter before a Michael McGlynn free opened their second half account in the 46th minute. 60 seconds later though Holy Trinity took a stranglehold on proceedings when Odhran Mulgrew went past a couple of challenges before crashing the ball to the net.

Ronan McCaffrey, Eoghan McCabe, Conor O’Brien and Darragh McBrien had points for St Michael’s. But by that stage time wasn’t on their side. St Michael’s lost full back Josh Horan to a straight red card three minutes into injury time and while Holy Trinity had Shay Quinn sent off for a second yellow card after that they were already looking forward to a quarter final meeting with St Patrick’s Maghera.

Holy Trinity Cookstown: S Lawn (0-1, 1F), J Hamilton, C Mulgrew, C Devlin, N Connolly, P Quinn, N Devlin (0-1), T Quinn, A O’Loughlin, O Mulgrew (1-0), S Quinn (0-1), M Devlin (0-6, 6F), P Connolly, P McClure (0-3), B Ryan.
Subs: R Campbell for Connolly, E O’Neill for O’Loughlin, B Donnelly for N Devlin

St Michael’s Enniskillen: F Quinn, D Donnelly, Jack Largo –Ellis, C Murphy, Josh Largo – Ellis (0-1), R McHugh (1-0), C O’Brien (0-2), O Hughes- Jordan, T Keenan, M McGlynn (0-1, 1F), D McBrien (0-1. 1F), R McCaffrey (0-1), L McCusker, O Murphy.
Subs: R McGovern for O Murphy, L McKeown for McCusker, E McCabe (0-1) for Keenan, J O’Donnell for Donnelly

Referee: M McNally, Monaghan