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©INPHO/Cathal Noonan
Different Class

UCC and UUJ prepare to do battle in Sigerson final

Some of the game’s rising stars will clash for the prestigious third-level title this afternoon.

THE SHOWPIECE OF the college GAA calendar comes to a close this afternoon as University College Cork and the University of Ulster Jordanstown square off in the final of the 100th Sigerson Cup in Belfield.

When it comes to the Sigerson, neither side are strangers to the main event. A win this afternoon would give Jordanstown title number six while UCC are hoping to pick up an impressive 16th national title.

Though both sides will feel that they have made this far on merit, neither side were among the experts’ preferred teams when the competition launched last month.

DIT – complete with Kerry star Paul Galvin – had been expected to feature in the tournament’s latter stages. However, they were unceremoniously dumped out in the first round by University of Limerick, with injury preventing their inter-county star from even kicking a ball in anger.

The other pre-tournament tip, last year’s champions DCU, fared slightly better than their Dublin rivals. They successfully managed to overcome the first-round challenge of St. Mary’s Belfast to make it to the tournament’s final weekend which kicked off in Belfield on Thursday afternoon.

They were, however, handed one of the harder quarter-final draws when they were paired against the team whom they had beaten in last year’s decider, UCC.

This time around the men from the Rebel County engineered a reversal, securing a memorable one-point victory when the sides met on Thursday afternoon. The Cork outfit continued their impressive run of form to pull another shock in yesterday’s semi-final when they beat hosts UCD by 0-13 to 0-11.

Their opponents this afternoon, the northerners from Jordanstown, had a slightly easier route to the final. Impressive throughout, they kicked off their campaign with a hefty 15-point victory over Cork IT two weeks ago before accounting for IT Carlow by 14 points in Thursday’s quarter-final.

Although NUI Maynooth provided a sterner test in yesterday’s semi-final, the Ulstermen managed to hold a second-half comeback at bay to record a two-point victory, sealing a place in today’s showdown.

UCC vs. UUJ (kick off, 2:15pm – live on TG4)

Quarter-Final Results (Thursday)

UUJ 2-19 IT Carlow 1-8

NUI Maynooth 0-9 UL 1-2

UCC 1-12 DCU 0-14

UCD 0-18 NUI Galway 2-3

Semi-Final Results (Friday)

UUJ 0-12 NUI Maynooth 0-10

UCC 0-13 UCD 0-11