Ballynahinch need to play to their strengths at they welcome Division 1A leaders St Mary's

Next week Adam Craig’s side visit second-placed Clontarf with the game being a league and Bateman Cup final double header and then Hinch face Instonians in the Ulster Senior Cup final two days after Christmas.

“I think when you're a team at the top-of-the-table and you're a team trying to push on, you have a lot of challenges there in terms of balancing players, player welfare, and also competing for all those competitions,” stated Craig.

"That's the sort of place this club wants to be in, so we're excited about the challenge ahead.

“We're super excited about two cup finals on the same day. The second XV had a great win against the Instonians there on Saturday and put themselves in a really good place to go out and have a good crack at Enniskillen.

"The first XV have got the Instonians in the senior cup finals, so we're pretty excited about that.

“We have a little matter of the Bateman Cup before that, so I think there's loads of big games coming up.

“We've worked hard in the last couple of years to put ourselves in a place of being up there as one of the teams to challenge for cups and leagues. We just need to make sure that when we get into these finals, that we finish the job.”

St Marys have won six out of seven games, have scored the most points and conceded the fewest in the top-flight this season.

Craig stated: “It's an exciting challenge, the league's in a really good place at the minute, and St Mary’s are leading the way in the statistics there. I think it's our job to try and find ways to make sure that we negate their strengths and then play to ours.

“It felt like against Lansdowne last week, we didn't impose ourselves in the game, so that'll be a big target for us this week.

“We'll certainly be making sure that we get things right so that they aren't able to punish us, and hopefully we'll be putting them to the sword at home.”

Hinch face the leaders after a defeat at Lansdowne last week, with their only defeat this season at home coming against Terenure.

“I think anybody that saw the game would say we probably deserved something out of it, but we were just pretty frustrated that we didn't nail some of our core basics, and that'll be a key work on for going into this week,” Craig explained.

“I think the Terenure game was a blip, they had probably got ahead of us in key areas, and then there was maybe a five, 10-minute period where we were just well off the boil, and they got a lot of points on the board.

“We're excited to play at Ballymacarn any time we do. The firsts and the seconds are playing together this weekend for the first time in a long time, so we'll hopefully enjoy two wins and a few pints after in the clubhouse.”

In Division 2A Ballymena host Banbridge, Dungannon travel to Old Cresent, in 2B Malone welcome UL Boh’s, Rainey are at Buccaneers while Clogher visit Skerries.

In 2C Belfast Harlequins entertain Bective, Ballyclare are at Malahide.