Women's Hockey Weekend round-up: Loreto and Hermes, as expected, were the dominant forces in Saturday's Leinster Jacqui Potter Cup second-round ties, brushing aside the two college teams Trinity and UCD respectively, with Loreto running out 9-0 winners, while Hermes, who led 2-1 at half time, finished 4-2 victors.

For Trinity it has been a demoralising week at the hands of Loreto, who beat them 7-1 in a back league match last Tuesday, and the college side had obviously not recovered enough to stem another onslaught on Saturday.

One player Trinity did not imagine seeing in the Loreto line-up was international winger Cathy McKean, who was expected to be on international training duty.

However it was belatedly discovered that McKean, who is studying for a Masters degree in UCD, had withdrawn from the Irish team's build-up to the Olympic Qualifier in New Zealand next March having informed Irish coach Riet Kuper last Thursday that she would not be available for selection until the end of April.

McKean duly made her presence felt in Saturday's 9-0 hammering of hapless Trinity in their Leinster Cup second-round tie in Santry, scoring a hat-trick. Top scoring honours, though, went to Nikki Keegan who notched four.

The draw for the third round, to be played on January 31st, keeps Loreto and Hermes apart but for Old Alex and Corinthians, who drew 2-2 in the league yesterday, their clash is the pick of the bunch.

Corinthians, who were hard pressed to beat Hermes Second in the Cup on Saturday, did themselves proud yesterday in holding Old Alex to that 2-2 league draw at Whitchurch Park.

Alex jumped into a 2-0 lead within six minutes of the start with goals from Trish Conway and Leane Ryan and while Linda Campbell reduced the deficit for Corinthians just before half-time, Alex felt they were denied a legitimate goal from player-coach Orla Bell in the opening half.

Kathy Johnson got on the end of a pass from Anna Ancher to level for Corinthians nine minutes after the half time break.

Pembroke Wanderers, whose cup tie with Clontarf was called off due to a waterlogged pitch, put in some valuable goal-scoring practice at the expense of bottom team Three Rock in yesterday's back league fixture to win 8-0 and join Corinthians and Loreto in joint second place in the table.