Mary Immaculate 0-19
LIT 0-14

Mary Immaculate will play IT Carlow in tomorrow's Fitzgibbon Cup final after comfortably seeing off LIT this evening in Dangan.

Limerick attacker Aaron Gillane led the way in the scoring stakes for the holders, who could afford to miss a penalty before half-time and still take in a 0-8 to 0-7 lead which they would build on brilliantly in the third quarter.

A dominant spell in the first 10 minutes after the interval in this Limerick derby left LIT playing catch up for the remainder of the half and Jamie Wall's charges with a final berth to savour after finishing with five points to spare.

The winners had surged 0-4 to 0-2 in front in this last four clash thanks to a nice display of accuracy early on from free-taker Gillane.

Two frees from Galway's Paul Killeen outweighed one form Gillane before David Dempsey levelled matters with a fine effort and Killeen's fifth free of the afternoon had Davy Fitzgerald's side ahead in the second quarter.

Colm Galvin lashed over a brilliant score to bring Mary I back level and they'd be awarded a penalty soon afterwards, which Eibhear Quilligan turned around the post brilliantly much to the relief of the LIT contingent.

Gillane converted the resultant '65' to send Mary I in at the break with the narrowest of leads and they'd mount a strong restart to make up for the missed penalty, outscoring their opponents by 0-7 to 0-2 during the opening 11 minutes with their Limerick talisman Gillane to the fore for them.

Killeen and Gillane exchanged frees to keep the difference to five heading towards the closing 10 minutes and Mary I really would have been out of sight had Quilligan not produced his second fine save of the evening to deny Darragh O'Donovan.

Wall's charges kept the scoreboard ticking over with scores from Gillane (free) and Stephen Cahill to cancel out Peter Duggan's pair of frees towards injury-time.

By that stage LIT were in dire need of goals, but the defending champions were in no mood to concede them and would only ship a Sean Ryan point, which was well tipped over by Ronan Maher, as Mary I made a comfortable return to tomorrow's decider.

Mary Immaculate - C Barrett; D Sweeney, R English, E Quirke; C Twomey, R Maher (0-1), A Flynn; C Galvin (0-3), S Cahill (0-1); D O'Donovan (0-1sl), M O'Neill (0-1), A Gillane (0-12, 10f, 1'65); L Meade, C Lynch, T Gallagher. Subs: T Monaghan for T Gallagher, C Stapleton for R English S Burke for M O'Neill.

LIT - E Quilligan; O O'Brien, K Bennett, C Nolan; W Ryan, B O'Connell, D Byrnes; D Reidy, W Connors (0-2); P Killeen (0-7f), P Duggan (0-2f), S Bennett; J Shanahan, J McCarthy (0-1f), D Dempsey (0-1). Subs: S Ryan (0-1) for S Bennett, A La Touche Cosgrave for W Connors, M O'Malley for J McCarthy.

Referee - P O'Dwyer.

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