AFTER a highly competitive Men’s Intermediate/Junior Championship, it will be Glasgow Gaels and Tír Conaill Harps who will be battling it out for the top prize at the end of this month.
Gaels Intermediate side topped the league on points difference, but they were one of three teams—alongside Harps and Dunedin Connollys—who all finished on eight points after recording four wins and a single loss each, show just how exciting the new league format has proved to be.
The first match of the campaign for Gaels Intermediates saw them record a victor over their Junior counterparts, before enjoying a win over Sands MacSwineys Juniors in Coatbridge, followed by home wins against the Intermediate sides of Dalriada and Connollys in Clydebank. The Glasgow side were then eventually defeated —having been reduced to 14 men—by an impressive Tír Conaill side, who they will no doubt be looking to gain revenge over in the Intermediate A Final.
Harps, meanwhile, bounced back from a very narrow home defeat to Connollys, to record wins away to Sands MacSwineys (above) and Glasgow Gaels Juniors—racking up an impressive points tally in the process—before overcoming Gaels Intermediates in Cambuslang and Dalriada Intermediates in Dundee to book their place in the final.
Connollys can consider themselves unlucky not to have made the Intermediate A Final having recorded Intermediate wins over Harps at home and Dalriada away, as well as an away win over Gaels Juniors and a win in Edinburgh against Sands MacSwineys Juniors. A slightly inferior points difference means, however, that they will take on Dalriada in the Intermediate B Final this month. The Dundee side struggled to replicate their league form, but did secure wins over the two Junior sides of Gaels and Sands to secure another Intermediate Final spot and a chance to get one over on Connollys as they did in the League Final earlier this year.
Gaels and Sands Juniors will face each other in the Junior Final at the start of next month. Both sides did their clubs proud with a series of fine performances in the championship, which they will no doubt look to build upon by lifting some silverware at the end of the season.
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