Better performances the main objective for Instonians as they face Blackrock

Instonians are second and a point behind leaders Old Wesley and they put their infallible home record on the line against Blackrock.

Elsewhere, City of Armagh have climbed into the play-off places and travel to UCC, while bottom-of-the-table Queen’s decimated by injury and Ulster call-ups face the table-toppers in Dublin.

Despite wins over Highfield and Queen’s in their last two outings, Instonians coach Paul Pritchard is wanting better performances from his team.

“They were two pretty disappointing performances but we got the results,” explained. “The big thing is we have got to improve the performance and that has been our focus.

“Obviously we are always trying to improve performances and we have raised the point that they have to come because if the performances aren’t there, then the results won’t always come.

“We were very flat against Queen’s and we would have expected more out of that game. Both teams know each other very well and we knew they had a lot of lads injured and were missing a lot of boys and maybe that was in our heads. We just didn’t get going and it felt like we were in third gear the whole of the game and we just have to pick that up.

“We have addressed it and hopefully going into these next two tough games we can pick up the performances.

“Blackrock are a typical Dublin team, they keep the ball alive very well they really want to play on top of you. If they win that gain line battle against you, you’re going to have a hard day and their plays off nine is a real weapon.

“The big thing for us is mentality and I thought against Queen’s defensively we did a good job. I didn’t think we were really under pressure at any time, I think we’ll be under more pressure this week.

“If we can win the majority of the gain line battles, we’ll win the game.”

Ian Whitten returns after missing last week’s win.

Having got into the top four, Armagh coach Chris Parker wants his side to kick on but they aren’t taking UCC for granted.

“When you are sitting in the dressing room at 4.15 and see yourself up the table it is good, but you can suddenly slide back down with a couple of loses,” he added. “It is great to be there at the minute, but we need to be there in 11 games time as well.

“We are extremely clear on the fact that it is great to be there now, but we need to back up a win with a with another.

“UCC seemed to have a difficult start but they have had two wins on the bounce. A big win away at Blackrock will mean they are going into this game with plenty of momentum.

“They have got their academy players firing for them and that makes a big difference for them. It is a difficult one to go down and win at the Mardyke we haven’t done it before so maybe as a group it is another thing we can possibly tick off as a first.

“We just need to keep getting better at the things we delivered at last week, we did some things really well and try and focus around ourselves if we can pitch up and produce a performance like last week, we’ll give ourselves a chance.”

James McCormick is released but Rory Magurie isn’t, Shea O’Brien is unavailable.