Danske Bank Edmund Rice Rannafast Cup final

Friday 20^th, 7.30pm in Inniskeen

St Macartan’s Monaghan v Patrician High Carrickmacross

IT’S THE old story about the London buses, isn’t it? Monaghan hadn’t celebrated a win in the Danske Bank Edmund Rice Rannafast Cup for 38 years until St Macartan’s Monaghan won the trophy at the Dub this time last year.

Now the county is assured of a second successive victory with Patrician High from Carrickmacross joining the holders in the decider at Inniskeen tonight.

It’s further evidence of the progress being made at underage level in the county – but few would have forecast that St Macartan’s would bring their defence of the title as far as the final, never mind face another Farney county school in that decider.

Only three players, Paudie Meehan, Aaron Mohan and Robbie McAlister, played in last season’s decider and are now pushing their colleagues in search of back-to-back medals.

However it has been full-forward Michael O’Brien who has grabbed the headlines in each of their last two games.

Although he had scored two goals in the first half of a hugely enjoyable quarter-final, St Macartan’s trailed St Patrick’s Academy Dungannon by four points with just four minutes left to play.

O’Brien banged home two goals at the death to take them through to a semi-final meeting with St Ronan’s and again the Emyvale striker delivered with two first half strikes.

Oisin McKenna at centre forward and Jamie Shields at half back are two more players who have assumed leadership roles for the school.

But the Sem would have been expecting to face Maghera in the final after their 2-9 to 1-8 win over St Ronan’s in that first semi-final. That was because this Maghera group had never lost a game in Colleges’ football in their path through the age-groups.

However Patrician High tore the form-book to shreds and fully deserved their 1-11 to 1-8 victory, having never been headed over the hour.

Patrician have been more in contention for B grade honours over the years – indeed they contested the MacLarnon Cup decider last March.

However after this group completed back-to-back wins in the Loch an Iúir Cup, they moved up to A Grade and were very unfortunate to lose out in the Brock Cup semi-final to St Pius X Magherafelt, two very late goals undoing all their good work before that.

That experience has stood well to them this season and they have had a trouble-free run through the Rannafast to set up this first ever all-Monaghan final.

An impressive 19-points win was recorded against St Colman’s in the quarter-final, prior to that titanic semi-final against Maghera

Sean Burns’ 1-1 around the 40^th minute of the semi-final were the key scores and they had the maturity to see the game out.

Of course the two sets of players are familiar with each other from club competition and county Development Squads and the pairing is sure to attract a lot of attention in Monaghan and beyond.

Although St Macartan’s are the holders, their appearance back in the final probably marks the greatest progress.

I think that Carrickmacross are probably slight favourites, but a derby could produce any result.

The biggest winners should be under-age football in the county. It’s a long time since there have been back-to-back Farney wins at any level of schools’ competition.

Probable teams :

St Macartan’s: E Treanor; R O’Toole, P Meehen, C McKenna, T Croarkin, T McSkeane, J Shields, S Treanor, G McPhillips, R McAlister, O McKenna, O Gleeson; R King, M O’Brien, A Mohan.

Patrician: R McCloskey, T McCourt, S Kindlon, C McKeown capt., C McNulty, K Slavin, O Martin, N Marron, L óg Murray, B Kieran, A Woods, O Wilcox, S Burns, J Gillick, J McMahon

This article was taken from   http://ulstercollegesgaa.org/ Please visit it for up to date fixtures, results  and match reports from Ulster Colleges games.