​Captain Joel McBride's delight at ‘full team’ display behind Ballyclare win

​Mike Orchin-McKeever’s side scored nine tries in the 66-0 win and captain Joel McBride, who scored the try last season to elevate Ballyclare into the All Ireland League, has been pleased with the start to the club’s first senior campaign.

“We have been together for the last three or four seasons and we are all gelling now,” said McBride. “Last season everything just kind of came together with the league win and the promotion and now three wins out of four is a good start to senior rugby for us.

“The step up has been difficult, teams are more physical, the games maybe don’t open up until the 60th or 70th minute, against Bruff everything went to plan for us, it has definitely been a big step up for us, but I’m pleased with how we have handled it.

“We’ll take the three bonus point wins, yeah Midleton the conditions but we can’t use that as an excuse, they dealt with it better, we played really well first half and maybe we thought with the conditions in our favour in the second half we had the game wrapped up.

“Full credit to them they took the win and we took our learnings into Bruff and I’m pleased how that went.”

McBride scored two of his team’s nine tries in the rout of Bruff.

“It was a full team performance and you can’t ask for much more, the forwards with the set piece really dominated and then when the space opened up our outside backs put them to the sword, so we are happy with that,” he said. “Our attack play was really strong but the thing we were most pleased about after the game was to keep them to nil, even at the end when they were getting towards our line to hold them out and keep them to nil is a really big achievement.”

Despite having the bonus point wrapped up after shortly after half-time Ballyclare never took their foot off the pedal.

“That is the sort of thing that we have learned already from senior rugby...that you can’t ease off, teams never die at this level they will come back into it,” he said. “After each score we got together and said ‘don’t let up, stay relentless’.

"Because if you give them one or two scores back it changes the game, so we just kept the foot on the gas.”

Ballyclare travel to Omagh on Saturday.

As well as McBride, Jack Gamble and Josh Cowan also scored a brace of tries. Scott Martin, Alex Darragh and Ryan McIlwaine also crossed. Matthew McDowell converted all nine tries and landed a penalty.

In Division 1A, Ballynahinch beat Young Munster 26-25 while City of Armagh lost 25-22 to UCD.

Queen’s slipped to a third consecutive defeat in Division 1B, losing 24-21 at Trinity.

Instonians made it a maximum 20 points from four games with a 33-12 win over Navan at Shaw’s Bridge. Hooker Neil Saulters and full back Bradley McNamara got two tries each - Glen Faloon also dotted down with Josh Eagleson kicking four conversions.

Banbridge enjoyed a 62-26 win over Buccaneers, Ballymena went down at Cashel.

In 2B, Dungannon beat Rainey, Clogher Valley had a bonus point win over UL Boh’s, Malone lost at Sligo while Belfast Harlequins edged Omagh in 2C.