St Patrick's College, Cavan 3-9
Abbey CBS, Newry 0-4

St Patrick's College, Cavan claimed their first ever D'Alton Cup success yesterday when they produced a five-star performance at Pearse Og in Armagh to see off Abbey CBS, Newry.

In a final which lopped one-sided after the opening 20 minutes, the winners were inspired by their captain Ryan Connolly, who struck for 1-4 over the hour to sink the Newry outfit and lead St Pat's to coveted glory.

Connolly grabbed the opening score for St Pat's with a sweet point and they added another before Ryan Treanor registered the Abbey CBS response in what was a low-key start to this decider.

However, when the young Breffni men sprung to life just after the first quarter and fired in their first goal through Ben Conaty they upped the momentum with two more points from Connolly to take in a commanding 1-5 to 0-1 lead at the break.

To their credit, Abbey recover well after the restart and rattled off three points without reply via Treanor and Shane Dobbin, but when Connolly tucked away his goal in style the finish-line was in sight for St Pat's.

Ronan O'Reilly bagged his team's third major shortly afterwards to bring his personal tally up to 1-2 and substitute Donovan McCaffrey banged over two more points to put the icing on a memorable victory for the Cavan students.

St Patrick's College, Cavan: M Fegan; G Brady, J Rahill, D Lunney; C McManus, T Galligan, P Sexton; C McCabe, M McKenna (0-1); R O'Reilly (1-2), R Connolly (1-4), P Smith; B Sheanon, B Conaty (1-0), D Gannon. Sub: D McCaffrey (0-2)

Abbey CBS, Newry: A Campbell; J Catterson, F Quinn, T Looney; C McKinney, S Gregory, L Byrne; S Dobbin (0-1), C McCoy; J Rock, R Treanor (0-3), R Campbell; N Rafferty, S Fitzpatrick, R McGrath. Subs: C Burns, G Fox, E Irwin Tweet

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