Belfast sides clash in Ulster Junior Final

This Sunday’s NWP Recycling Ulster Junior Championship Final will see a Belfast derby match as St John’s from the west of the city face Bredagh of the Southside. Both teams battled to victory on Sunday in their respective Semi-Finals and will face off this Sunday in Clann Eireann, Lurgan.

St John’s defeated Derry champions Banagher at Corrigan Park in a physical low scoring affair coming out the right side of a 2-05 to 0-04 victory. Bredagh however pulled off a bit of shock defeating reigning NWP Recycling Ulster Junior Champions Crosserlough as their scoring of 2-05 was enough to pip the Cavan side in Kilnaleck. Despite both teams competing out of the Belfast due to Bredagh being a North Down side there has been little exchanges between the two bar an early season friendly which St John’s manager Malachy McToal isn’t reading much into

‘We played a friendly at the start of the year but you couldn’t take much from it. Both sides would be well changed from that game. Bredagh beating Crosserlough caused a bit of an upset so we’ll have to give Bredagh full respect come Sunday.’

Bredagh manager Fintan McDonnell concedes that despite dethroning Crosserlough his side remain as underdogs. ‘We’ll be underdogs again this week as we were last week. Both teams have a lot of young players but St John’s have many players who played for Antrim seniors and would have more experience. Like last week we’ll go out and give it a good rattle see what happens from there’

McToal believes the intensity of the game and the work rate of his side and Banagher led to a low scoring game which will hold the Johnnies in good stead. ‘It was hard hitting and Banagher really put it up to us. Both sides closed each other down well and didn’t provide much space. In the last 5 minutes we spread the play and Niamh Adams and Aisling Jackson got a bit more space to play. We have a good mix of youth and experience, possibly about eight girls under the age of 18 which was the reason why we believe this the level we are at right now before we push back into Senior Championship in Antrim. Right now all we are focused on is Bredagh on Sunday’

Bredagh manager McDonnell believes that his side’s second half performance to come from 5 points down in the first half to win by one is something that will be needed for a full sixty minutes this weekend. ‘We were poor in the first half and got a lucky goal to remain in the game at half time. We remained calm at the break and addressed some areas. In the second half we flew out of the blocks and from one to fifteen we were like a different team. We had more belief and held on as Crosserlough came back at us. While St John’s have more experienced players we can’t fall into the same trap of giving our opponents too much respect and if we can put in a performance for 60 minutes we will be there or there abouts’.

With the cup going back to Belfast we’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out exactly where.

(Pictured Above- Bredagh captain Christina Smith and St Johns captain Helen Wilson with Ulster Chairperson Kathleen Woods)