A FROZEN pitch at Belfield caused the postponement of the all-Hermes and Trinity v Loreto II Leinster Cup ties on Saturday while two Munster League ties (in Bandon and at Harlequin Park) also fell victim to the weather.

There were no surprises in the remaining Leinster Cup matches but Genesis forced division one leaders Loreto to work hard for their 2-1 victory at Loughlinstown. Meanwhile, at Whitechurch, Trish Conway, who scored five goals for Leinster on their way to Interprovincial success last week, picked up a hat-trick for Old Alexandra on their way to a 5-0 victory over UCD.

Conway is one of a number of players who impressed Irish coach Terry Gregg at Grange Road and has greatly enhanced her prospects of winning a place in the squad that travels to Zimbabwe next August for the World Cup qualifying tournament. "From my point of view it was a very good Interprovincials, all the current Irish squad played very satisfactorily," said Gregg at the weekend.

"I was interested more in individual performances rather than team play and all of the ones who were producing the goods are already in the Irish squad. I was happy to see all the Leinster forwards scoring goals and looking sharp - the Irish forward line of Mary Logue and Jenny Burke were the people doing the damage and on top of that you had Trish Conway producing some nice hockey. That's where Leinster's real success lay, their fantastic goalscoring," added the Irish coach.

Gregg has decided to delay naming a squad until the New Year when a programme of up to ten friendly internationals, in preparation for Zimbabwe, will be arranged. For now he will add "three or four new names" to his existing training squad whose players will undergo regular fitness testing over the coming months.