Action from the McCrea Cup match between Academy and City of Armagh 2XV on Saturday 8 February 2025. Photo: Cyril Boyd. © FRU SPORTS 2025.

McCrea Cup: Academy 50 City of Armagh 2XV 31

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We caught up with the McCrea Cup quarter final between Academy and City of Armagh 2XV at Roughfort on Saturday afternoon.

Academy were first to put points on the board with a couple of early penalties, successfully scored by , for a 6 – 0 lead

Michael Wilson picked up 25 points for Academy in their McCrea Cup match.

City of Armagh hit back with two great forward driving tries, both scored by their No 2, to take a 10 – 6 lead.

Rory Linden Slides home for his second try.

Academy finished the half in some style with a third Wilson penalty, a try by , then two tries by No 11, the second of which was converted by Wilson to give Academy a 26 – 10 lead at half time.

After the break, the visitors poured on the pressure and it was their No 8, Ryan Finlay who powered his way over with adding the conversion. Reaney completed his hat-trick soon after with a surge through the middle to score with King again converting to take the score to 26 – 24.

Action from the McCrea Cup quarter final between Academy and City of Armagh 2XV at Roughfort on Saturday 8th Febriary 2025

Academy’s Wilson added to the home score with another penalty and then ran in a try himself, adding the conversion too! Next up for Academy, it was scrum half who crossed the line, Wilson adding the extra points. This was  quickly followed by No 13 crossing under the posts, again converted to push the score out to 50 – 24.

Armagh never gave up the fight and late on added to their total when No 5, crashed over allowing King to kick the final points of the game. This took the final score to 50 – 31 in Academy’s favour, the home team progressing to the semi finals o the McCrea Cup.

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