St Mary's returned to haunt UCD again.
This time last week, Con O'Callaghan was finding the net for Dublin against Kerry...
https://twitter.com/RTEgaa/status/1094317245205929986
On Saturday, in the Sigerson Cup semi-finals, O'Callaghan and a highly talented UCD team could not find, buy or fluke a score for 38 minutes.
The Dublin university side lost Liam Silke from their squad, due to club championship duty with Corofin, and they missed him dearly.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOE_GAA/status/1096815923724517377
St Mary's Belfast had beaten UCD on their way to Sigerson glory in 2017. Their captain for that winning campaign was Conor Meyler.
That triumph was rightly lauded at the time as 'The Ranch' have a student body of around 1,000. With five Armagh men and and four from Tyrone in their starting team, their is a steel rod running through this side.
UCD had no Silke but they could call on O'Callaghan, Conor McCarthy, Evan O'Carroll, Darren Gavin and captain Stephen Coen, who led them to Sigerson glory last year.
https://twitter.com/DubMatchTracker/status/1096784622405541888
UCD would have expected their opponents to come out of the traps at some pace and to not give them an inch in attack and defence - that is a given - but they surely did not expect to go scoreless for the entirety of the first half.
There was a strong wind behind St Mary's back in the opening 30 minutes but they still took 10 minutes to register a point. After that settler, they found their range and scored four more in a five-minute scoring burst. It was 0-7 to 0-0 at the break.
St Mary's kept UCD at bay until the 38th minute until they finally conceded a score. UCD made it 0-7 to 0-3 before Mary's went down the other end to extend their lead to five points. The closest UCD got was 0-9 to 0-7 but Mary's settled the contest with the final score of the match.
The Belfast outfit march on to the final and it took a mighty effort to get there.
