In the last few seasons, the quarter-final hurdle has been one that Creggs have found tricky to clear, but they produced the most eye-catching display of the weekend, scoring ten tries to comprehensively defeat St. Mary’s.
The game was breathless from the outset, and little separated the teams by the break, with Creggs coming out on top in a blistering second stanza.
Their experience in this competition certainly told, as they marched into the semi-finals.
Dean O’Reilly was the Connacht side’s scoring star with four tries. It was fellow winger Mikey Dunne who opened the scoring in the seventh minute by applying the finishing touches to a superb team score which started from deep.
The visitors led 26-0 after just 18 minutes, with Shane Dowd (2) and Cormac Dolan swiftly taking the try haul to four. But St. Mary’s, playing their first ever home game in the Junior Cup, are made of stern stuff. They rallied to close the gap to 31-21 by half-time.
Second row Stephen Hayes barged over for their third try, adding to earlier efforts from Keith McManus and Adam Guerin. However, a chargedown effort from O’Reilly, who had gotten off the mark before the break, kept Creggs on course.
The Connacht Junior player went on to claim a second-half hat-trick, with Creggs reaching the half-century mark by the 66th minute. Mark Purcell crashed over before O’Reilly touched down from a brilliant Purcell cross-field kick.
Dunne did the donkey work for O’Reilly’s fourth of the afternoon, and although Paul Curtis replied late on for Mary’s, Creggs made it a 32-point winning margin when Chris Duignan supplied try number ten.
