Jonny Greer withstands Sam Moffett in wet Loughgall Rally final-stage showdown
The 2026 Loughgall Stages Rally finished with a genuine fight against the clock on Saturday 4 July. Jonny Greer and Niall Burns led throughout in their Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, but entered the final five-mile Springhill stage less than a second ahead of Sam Moffett and Pierce O’Callaghan in a Hyundai i20 Rally2. Greer found enough speed on the last test to claim the rally by 4.1 seconds. This was the third round of the Northern Ireland Rally Championship, and the closing stage turned what might have been reported as a routine start-to-finish win into one of the season's closest contests.
Why the final stage mattered
Greer had built an early advantage but could never relax. Moffett progressively reduced the difference as the crews returned to the same stages, and the margin was below one second with only Springhill to come. At that point, one slight error in braking or a loss of traction on the wet surface could have reversed the positions. Instead, Greer produced the stronger decisive run and increased the gap to 4.1 seconds at the finish. The exact movement in the margin illustrates the sporting outcome better than a simple list of first and second places.
The North Armagh Motor Club route consisted of six stages: three passes over the eight-mile Callan River test, interleaved with three runs over Springhill, which ended in Loughgall Country Park. Springhill measured approximately 5.06 miles. Competitors therefore had several opportunities to learn each stage, but wet conditions meant familiarity did not eliminate risk. A road surface could still be slower or less predictable on a later pass. Moffett's challenge was credible precisely because he had closed a gap that was already small by the final run.
An event with depth beyond the front two
Niall McGonigle and Caolan McKenna finished third in a Volkswagen Polo GTI R5. Their result was not without incident: the Strabane crew survived a high-speed spin earlier in the event and still recovered to end 17.3 seconds behind second-placed Moffett. That incident is essential to the assessment of their performance. A third-place finish achieved after an error tells a different story from a clean drive that simply lacked the speed to challenge.
Barry Morris and Denver Rafferty were the highest-placed two-wheel-drive crew, bringing their Darrian T90 GTR+ home sixth overall. With modern all-wheel-drive Rally2 cars filling the top of the entry, a sixth-place result for a lightweight rear-wheel-drive car stands out. Ninety-one crews started the rally, nineteen in Rally2 or R5 cars, and 74 were classified as finishers. Those figures put the leading results in perspective: the contest had a genuine field, a wide range of machinery and a significant attrition rate.
The road to Greer's eventual title
The fourth of July win became an important step in Greer's 2026 title campaign. Three weeks later, he and Burns won the inaugural Rallye Lecale by 54.1 seconds and secured a sixth Northern Ireland championship with a round to spare. It is useful to look backwards from that later achievement, because the two victories required very different responses. At Loughgall, a Hyundai was nearly level with Greer's Toyota as the final stage began. At Lecale, early leader Cathan McCourt retired and Greer won with room to spare.
