It was always going to take something rather extraordinary to temporarily halt the relentless march of Pegasus towards making the retention of their Ulster Senior league title a mathematical certainty - something like Ulster's rugby side reaching the final of the European Cup.
Yes, the Ulster Ladies' Hockey Union, in their wisdom, decided to avoid the prospect of only the ball turning up at tomorrow's Section One and Two matches and so postponed the entire weekend's programme. Most of the province's hockey players will, instead, be found haggling with ticket touts outside Lansdowne Road tomorrow afternoon.
On Wednesday night Pegasus made it 19 wins out of 19 this season, beating Portadown 3-0 in the semi-finals of the Ulster Shield (taking their goal tally to 104 - they still have conceded only two). They were due to play Coleraine this weekend when a win would have all but clinched the title - they must now wait until Wednesday night when they play their fellow Irish Cup semi-finalists at Upper Malone. Fortunately the race for the Leinster League Senior A title is a more competitive one, with Loreto ensuring they retained an interest on Tuesday night when they recovered from going two goals down to Pembroke Wanderers to win 3-2. Old Alexandra responded the following night by beating Trinity 2-0 and are now level on 32 points with Loreto at the top of the table, having played one game less. They must now avoid any slip-ups against Pembroke tomorrow at Milltown, a match coach David Judge rates as his team's most difficult remaining fixture of the season, bar the final day's meeting with Hermes. Hermes, who are seven points behind the leaders, but with two games in hand on Alexandra and three on Loreto, play Genesis tonight at Belfield. The match was moved from Saturday because Genesis's Siobhan Keogh and Hermes' Jenny Burke will be working with the Irish under-16 squad over the weekend - Keogh is the under-16 coach and Burke her assistant.
UCD's hopes of winning promotion to Senior A will receive their sternest test of the season at Belfield tomorrow where they play Senior B leaders Hermes II. Last season the teams finished joint top of Senior B but the students missed out on promotion by losing a penalty strokes competition to Hermes II at the end of their title play-off match. They are currently three points adrift of the leaders but have a game in hand and victory this weekend would boost their hopes of replacing the doomed Clontarf in Senior A.
