MacRory Cup Wins All Round

Thursday 28.10.2010

Club

Both Tyrone colleges enjoyed wins in their Mac Rory Cup fixtures this week. Dungannon had an easy first fixture victory over a poor St. Patrick’s Cavan last week and followed that up with a two goal win on Monday against St. Mary’s Magherafelt. The Tyrone side are many people’s favourites for this year’s competition but were made to work very hard to overcome a well organised and determined Convent side. Indeed county minor star Harry Og Conlon had to come off the bench to give the Dungannon lads the edge late in the game. The big midfielder scored two goals for his team and seems to have continued on where he left off with the county minor side.

Those two opening victories leaves Dungannon on four points out of four and virtually guarantees that they will qualify for the quarter finals after Christmas. As for Omagh CBS, their opening fixture was postponed and they only got their campaign underway in Kildress today at 11:00 am. Once again it was St. Mary’s Magherafelt who provided the opposition and with students from Derry, Tyrone and Antrim on their team the Convent gave the Omagh side quite a fright.

Omagh led at half time by two goals and looked reasonably comfortable at that stage with Ronan O’Neill and Tommy Mc Carron particularly outstanding. However Magherafelt boss John Mc Elholm must have read the riot act during the break because his side were transformed after the interval. Omagh started the second half well but Magherafelt bossed the midfield and hunted in packs showing much greater hunger and intensity for the break ball. The Convent missed a second half penalty with ten minutes left and when you consider they only lost by four points such a miss had a huge bearing on the final result.

In fairness to Omagh this was their first game in the competition and they did look sluggish and disorganised at times. The team looks far from settled and I would be very surprised if the lineout that played in this game retain the same positions later in the competition. There were several positives for Omagh including the goal scoring ability of John Mc Cullagh, Colly Mc Crory and Benny Donaghy. Young Donaghy had a positive debut in the middle of the field and looks like a player with lots of potential. Overall the Omagh management team will be delighted to have started their campaign with a win and will now hope to build on this with victory over Cavan in the next game.