Crossmaglen now ready for national defence

Ulster Club SFC Final/Crossmaglen 1-9 St Gall's 1-6: All-Ireland champions Crossmaglen Rangers tucked away the AIB Ulster club football title for the sixth time yesterday and now head for the defence of their national title. By their standards it was a comprehensive victory even if the match was on open verdict all the way through nearly six minutes of injury-time.

As so often the perennial Armagh champions owed their success to another lethal display of finishing by Oisín McConville, who clocked out with 1-5 to his name, including the goal that effectively separated the sides.

On a grey, overcast afternoon in Newry before a crowd of 8,100, Crossmaglen and their Belfast challengers played out a thrilling, fast-paced duel for provincial honours. Gall's have built a big reputation in recent years and for most of the first half yesterday they gave every impression of being capable of bringing down the championship specialists.

Kevin McGourty moved out to the half forwards and handled a lot of ball, kicking a point and offering good support play to link centrefield and attack.

His team-mates were edging the breaking ball, Seán Kelly from the back and Aodhán Gallagher from wing forward seeing plenty of possession, and piecing together excellent moves.

The speed of the game in the first half was relentless, Gall's making frequent use of the quick kick-out to press forward.

The only goal of the first half came after a chance for Cross at the other end had been cleared and the ball moved quickly into attack, where Kevin Niblock held it up well and after he had tussled himself a bit of space got the pass away for the breaking Gallagher to finish to the net on 22 minutes.

A three-point margin in a match of this tightness looked significant but the champions weren't likely to dwell on the negative possibilities and instead mounted a sustained spell of probing for the rest of the half.

Anto Healy fouled Martin Aherne for Aaron Kernan to land the free, and before the break, McConville drifted a free wide for what appeared a possibly costly miss but, given a chance to redeem himself within seconds, slotted a similarly placed free and followed it with an injury-time point, levered in from the right corner.

You can never be sure when the critical phase of a match will fall but yesterday those eight minutes defused the Gall's threat when it was at its greatest, reassured Cross and appeared to deflate their opponents, whose second-half game lacked the sparkle and fluency of the initial half-hour.

The winning captain, John McEntee, was in no doubt as to the significance of that passage: "After they got their goal we held our composure, which was important. The three scores before half-time won us the game."

Just after the break there were some early inaccuracies from both teams before McConville crowned a great Cross move, featuring a driving run from the excellent David McKenna, accomplished interplay between John McEntee and Michael McNamee and an emphatic finish.

The lead stretched to four, 1-7 to 1-3, but Gall's rallied a little, though their game lacked its earlier pace and penetration. Their replacement CJ McGourty hit two frees and his brother Kevin added one more from play, but they never quite convinced they were back in the hunt for all that the margin remained within one score for most of the half.

Overall, Crossmaglen were markedly superior in the second period, mopping up Gall's attacks and responding with purposeful breaks forward. Typical of the champions, they were reluctant to put the match away decisively and a couple of good scoring opportunities went for nothing.

McConville received the sponsors' man-of-the-match award but was keen to emphasise the collective: "We hadn't played particularly well in the past two matches coming into this game but we felt there was a big performance in us. We delivered when we had to, when they got the goal.

"There are 33 or 34 lads on the panel and this is all about what every single one puts into it.

"We're not here by chance. This is the result of a huge effort by everyone involved. We felt at half-time that we'd got back into the game and if we lifted it we could get some scores."

CROSSMAGLEN RANGERS: P Hearty; S Finnegan, P Kernan, P McKeown; A Kernan (0-2, one free), T McEntee, B McKeown; D McKenna, S Clarke; M McNamee (0-1), J McEntee (capt), M Aherne; T Kernan (0-1), J Hanratty, O McConville (1-5, three frees). Subs: J Murtagh for Hanratty (48 mins); S Kernan for Aherne (51 mins); K Carragher for T Kernan (60 mins).

ST GALL'S: R Gallagher; C Brady, A McLean, S Kennedy; P Veronica, S Kelly, A Healy; S Burke, M McCrory; T O'Neill (0-1), K Niblock, A Gallagher (1-0); K Stewart (0-1), Kevin McGourty (0-2), Kieran McGourty. Subs: CJ McGourty (0-2, frees) for Stewart (36 mins); S Burns for Kelly (44 mins).

Referee: J White (Donegal).