Instonians on brink of sealing Division 2C title and automatic promotion

Paul Pritchard’s men have won all 13 AIL games with bonus points and are 19 points clear as they prepare to welcome basement club Sunday’s Well to Shaw’s Bridge.

A win for Inst coupled with Tullamore failing to beat Omagh will clinch promotion for the Belfast side.

Inst made it 13 out of 13 at Bruff last weekend.

Pritchard said: “Bruff is never an easy place to go and we knew we were going to be in for a real physical battle, and that is what we got and the boys were pretty sore after the game.

“The boys went into it, did their work and came away with the five points which is what we were after and we’re very happy with how it went.”

Despite 54 points and nine places between Inst and Sunday’s Well in the table, Pritchard says there is no room for complacency.

“We just have to focus on ourselves, I’ve been in sport long enough to know a team could win the league [and] a team at the bottom of the league coming up, everybody writes them off – that’s the one that can happen and it happens a lot.

“If we think we are somewhere we’re not we’ll have a rough day, but knowing the boys and knowing what they have done all year I don’t worry about that for one second.

“I know the guys are still trying to get better, trying to improve every training session and we’re looking to be better this Saturday than we were last Saturday and that is the sort of mentality we have.”

“They are a proud Munster team, they are going to come up and we are going to be in for a battle.”

Elsewhere, Bangor host Clonmel while Armagh are a point clear at the top of Division 1B after a bonus point derby win over Banbridge.

Coach Chris Parker said: “Very happy – it was a desperate banana skin ahead of us, it was Ulster derby that was going to be extremely difficult and at half-time we knew we were in a fixture.”

Armagh face a tough trip to fourth-placed Highfield.

Parker added: “Every week it is about raising your performance and getting better from the week before. Woodleigh Park is a notoriously difficult place for teams to go.

“They we’ll be smarting from last week’s result against Old Belvedere because they were on a really good run of form up to that.

“If we keep winning we’ll be around the top. We spoke about it after the game last Saturday, it was ‘well done we got five points on the board but we need to be in this position at 4 pm this Saturday’. We’ll just try to take it week to week.”

Full-back Shea O’Brien returns from injury.

Basement club Malone travel to second placed Buccaneers (5.30pm) and Banbridge host St Mary’s.

In Division 1A Ballynahich travel to Young Munster.

Navan host Queen’s in Division 2A and Ballymena entertain Cashel.

"In the fourth tier Rainey travel to Galwegians (12pm), Dungannon host Malahide and Belfast Harlequins visit Wanderers.