Mature look to Junior Cup

THE IRISH Junior Cup final at Garryduff tomorrow is remarkable in that most of the participants have been operating at senior level this season.

While Harlequins II's involvement in the Munster Premier League has probably helped to fortify them in their passage to the ultimate hurdle, Avoca II - in the club's rough transition year - field seven players who have sampled hockey in the A division of the European Cup Winners' Cup.

In that tournament in Reading at Easter, goalkeeper Stephen Kinsella and centre back David Hanna particularly relished the experience. Furthermore, two other members of the side, defender Ian Keogh and front runner Enda Gallanagh, as well as sweeper Philip Sarratt, carry Irish Senior Cup medals into a quest to make it a senior junior double in successive seasons.

Sarratt also has a link with the Avoca team which last won the junior trophy. His father Geoffrey scored a hat trick in the 6-0 defeat of Carlow in the 1965 final at Londonbridge Road.

For Harlequins, there is the restlessness of having not yet won an all Ireland crown after seven appearances in deciders (senior and junior) dating back to the halcyon days of Billy Carpenter.

However, the current second XI have committed themselves fully to making the breakthrough. Robust and uninhibited, the side includes four survivors of the 1995 squad which went under to Instonians in the senior final - Sam Scriven, Stephen Ludgate, David Lombard and Derek Turnbull. There would have been a filth figure, but Eoin Lane broke a finger in training.

Harlequins will be depending much in midfield on the indefatigable Turnbull (whose activity goes back as far as the 1979 defeat by Three Rock Rovers II) and the equally industrious David Long. Another key performer will be Wesley Bateman between the posts.

As both Bateman and the Avoca captain, Kinsella, are the two out standing young goalkeepers in the country, a high scoring game is unlikely. However, the Dublin players participation in more exalted circles may be a telling factor in which case it would be a third success in a row for a Leinster club, following Glenanne's eclipse of Banbridge in 1995 and then Pembroke Wanderers' win last season.