This weekend saw the second weekend of Leinster league and the first week of Womens Irish Hockey League and Railway junior hockey matches kicking off.

The womens 1s took on local neighbours Pembroke at Park Avenue in what was a close encounter albeit with the Sandymount girls holding the upper hand until the last quarter when Railway scored a couple of goals and ran out comfortable winners four goals to nil.
Earlier in the day Railway womens 2s rebuilding after a number of players moving to play varsity hockey saw some younger players taking the opportunity in Leinster Division 2 with four u16s girls stepping up to second eleven hockey to play with the current Irish Junior Cup holders with Isabella Willis, Jessica Carroll, Nicole Barry and 15 year old goalkeeper Chloe Hiles making her 2nd XI debut.
It was Railway who took the lead with deft touch from Jessie McConn Walsh evading the Corinthian goalkeeper, at the start of the second half a great turnover from Nicole Barry deep in the Railway half saw her release Isabella Willis who stormed to a 50m run drawing the keeper and passing to the unmarked Nicole Barry to finish off the move she started.
Corinthians responded late in Q3 with a second phase short corner goal to reduce the arrears and former Railway player Jodie Douglas had several powerful shots well saved by Railway as the Railway girls held on to record their first points of the year.

The womens Div 3 team took on TRR Womens 2nds with a side missing several experienced players, despite this they outplayed 3 Rock but could not pull away missing a plethora of chances and ended up conceding a late goal to lose 1-0 through a defensive error. In Division 6 Railway took on a strong Kilkenny 2nds side and conceded several early goals with the team unable to compete they lost 5 goals to 1.
The other womens game saw a 2-0 win in Div 11 v Avoca with goals from Isabel Alexander and Kate O’Sullivan scoring the goals, and a 4-0 Div 12 win v Muckross with goals from Kate Howley, Abigail Phelan, Kate O’Sullivan and Isabel Alexander in what was a triple header at our new second pitch at Lansdowne Sports Park at Claremont Road, Sandymount.

The Mens club had a triple header in the league v Portrane with the M1s winning 2-1, the Mens 2s losing 1-0 and to even things off the Mens 3s drawing 1-1.

Sunday Junior Hockey
On Sunday the Juniors took to the fore and our girls Inters As (u16As) opened their defence of the Leinster Inter A league to retain the trophy for the fifth year in a row with a very hard fought 5-1 win against Portrane with Olivia Hanley, Susie Halpin and Lisa Holmes scoring the goals. It was only 2-0 at half time and only later on in the game did Railway’s strength in depth allow them to pull away.
The Girls Inter Bs lost narrowly to Loreto in Division 2 with the other two u16 girls games postponed. The primary school girls enjoyed a series of blitzes with YM Hockey club in the morning and afternoons time.

The boys u12s continued their dominance at this age group in Dublin (champions for past two years) with a 4-0 win over Corinthians u12As with the u12 boys development team drawing 1-1 against Corinthians in a really good game given the wind and rain. Finally the Boys u14s finished off the weekend in the miserable conditions twice giving the lead away to draw 2-2 with Corinthians. Stephen O’ Leary had put the boys in front with a fine short corner strike and in the second half with the boys on top Oliver Mason produced a fine finish to put them ahead 2-1, however, they allowed Corinthians back into the game and after the Whitechurch team equalised it took two top class saves from Cole Hogan in the Railway goal to make sure the boys got a point.