In one of the few women's hockey fixtures to survive the wintry elements on Saturday Hermes won through to the semi-finals of the Leinster Senior Cup at Belfield with a 1-0 victory over Old Alexandra.

Gale force wins and driving rain forced either the postponement or abandonment of the bulk of the league matches in Leinster and Ulster but, despite a three minute break for a hailstone shower, the match at Belfield was played to its conclusion. Jenny Burke's 15th minute strike from a short corner won her team a meeting with Loreto in next month's semi-finals.

"The conditions were absolutely awful but, needless to say, once we went a goal up we were anxious for the match to finish," said Burke. "After the disappointment of losing to Muckross (in the league) and Randalstown (in the Irish Senior Cup) last month this is a great result for us."

Old Alexandra, weakened by the absence of their injured leading scorer Trish Conway, rallied after going a goal down but Hermes, boosted by the return from injury of Irish international Carol Devine and a superb midfield display by Fiona Manning, showed signs of recovering their impressive early season form by holding out for the win.

"We trained over Christmas, had a practice match last Tuesday against the Leinster under-16 boys and then had a two-hour training session last Friday night, so everyone was saying 'if I'm giving up my Christmas to train we're not losing this match," said Burke.

The league match between Muckross and Railway Union at Rathdown was abandoned, with the score at 0-0, after 17 minutes due to horrendous weather conditions, a fate that also befell four Ulster league matches on Saturday.

Collegians are entitled to feel the hardest-done-by - they were a goal up against champions Randalstown when their match was abandoned after nine minutes. Pegasus, too, deserved some sympathy after the umpires called a halt to their game against Coleraine, six minutes before halftime, when they were 2-0 up. In the only Ulster match to be completed a Jill Orbinson goal gave Portadown a 1-1 draw away to Ards, for whom Irish sweeper Julie Stewart had opened the scoring.

Two Munster league fixtures survived on Saturday with UCC stretching their lead at the top of the table to four points over Harlequins (who have a game in hand) with a 3-1 win over Bandon, courtesy of goals from Johanna Hyland (two) and EJ Walsh.

Meanwhile, Belvedere warmed up for next week's Irish Senior Cup tie against Pegasus in Belfast with a 1-0 win over Catholic Institute.