St. Patrick's hoping for another MacRory Cup win

Abbey Vocational School Donegal vs. St. Patrick's, Maghera, February 9, Celtic Park, 3PM

IF Abbey Vocational School Donegal manage to take the Danske Bank MacRory Cup home from Celtic Park on Sunday evening, it will be a huge news story.

They are already the first Donegal school to reach the final. They are also in their first year in the competition having won the Danske Bank MacLarnon Cup last February at the first attempt. No team has collected MacLarnon and MacRory Cups in consecutive years. And 13 of the 15 who started the semi-final are from the same club – the Four Masters with two from Naomh Bríd! Four Masters of course have won back-to-back Ulster minor titles at the turn of the year.

Because of those runs for the school and club, the players’ names are now familiar outside the county, particularly the ones who get among the scores: Tomás and Turlough Carr, Conor McCahill, Oisín Doherty, Kevin Muldoon.

By contrast St Patrick’s Maghera have a rich history in the competition, 15 times outright winners with the 2020 title shared with St Colman’s, Newry, the only school to head them on the winners list. St Colman’s had won ten titles before they met Maghera in the 1976 final – the Derry school’s first decider.

Maghera have reached nine other finals and lost seven of those to St Colman’s, leaving St Mary’s Belfast (1986) and St Michael’s Enniskillen (2012) as the only other teams to beat them in the showpiece for Ulster schools’ GAA that will take place for the first time in Derry city.

Abbey Vocational played St Colman’s in this year’s quarter-final and led the Newry school from pillar to post to win 1-7 to 1-5 and then won the Donegal derby by two points a fortnight ago, after the southwest amalgamation of five schools beat Omagh CBS, the back to back Hogan Cup winners.

Abbey play a style of football patented by Jim McGuinness for the county team more than a decade ago, a densely populated defence that breaks with pace in search of scores. They lost just once in the group stages of the competition. That was against St Paul’s Bessbrook when they were leading comfortably at half time, but lost control of the game and came up a couple of points short. That was in their second game. They learned their lesson and still came out winners of the group.

That’s the task ahead of St Patrick’s Maghera who were not as heralded this season as in the past, probably a legacy of failed campaigns since Conor Glass lifted the Cup in 2016. Yet they come into the final unbeaten.

Right place at the right time

The closest anyone came to defeating them was three weeks ago when St Mary’s Magherafelt led the quarter-final into injury time only for Turlough McHugh to be in the right place at the right time to grab an equalising goal. Before the Convent boys could raise their heads, Cormac óg McCloskey popped over the winning point.

That gave them a semi-final ticket against St Patrick’s Armagh in awful conditions in Derrylaughan after the Box-It Athletic Grounds was hit by Storm Éowyn. No-one will remember much about that game – it ended 0-5 to 1-0 with just one score in the second half – except that Maghera won it.

The tightness of their defence isn’t a huge surprise given that Derry’s long time defender Chrissy McKaigue is now on the management team along with Sean Marty Lockhart and Willie McAteer. Defence is the foundation stone of the team. Consequently Maghera tend to gain control at the back and then try to work openings for enough scores to be ahead at the final whistle.

They have lost out in a couple of recent campaigns by trying to play more expansive football, and have now opted for the more conservative route. The only problem is that their attack-building hasn’t come from speedy breaks from turnovers in their own half and it is therefore a little more difficult to break down defences.

GAA GUIDE: Six live games on TV or stream with a hurling-heavy weekend on the horizon

There are some very useful players knocking about the Maghera team, including six who have All-Ireland minor medals stored away, Turlough McHugh, Jack McCloy, Pádraig Haran, Pádraig O’Kane, Dara McGuckin and Rian Collins. Odhrán Doherty is seen as a rising star with Portglenone and Antrim and he also has contributed to what is essentially a solid team effort.

Abbey have broken convention almost in every outing since they played their first game in the MacLarnon at Halloween 2023. It is their speed out of defence that has been their hallmark. If Maghera get on top of this, they have every right to believe that they will win their 17th title and progress into the All-Ireland series later in the month.