David Whitten taking the positives after Instonians impress in Bateman Cup final

The Belfast team had toppled four Division One clubs to reach the decider and scored four tries in Dublin, but playing a quarter of the game with 14 men proved too much against a clinical Lansdowne team.

“The two yellow cards were tough, but I thought our character on that first yellow card where we win it with five points showed we were really up for it,” said Whitten. “The second one we were chasing our tails and I thought it was harsh, two players going hard at it and dipping – it’s a 50/50 and the two yellow cards killed our momentum.

“They are a good side. When they get into the 22 it all speeds up and you have to work that bit harder and they showed why they are 1A standard when they got into our 22. Outside the 22 we fought really hard and were right in it at stages in the game.

“You make a couple of errors and a team like that will punish you and they probably got too far away for us to try and come back.

“They were clinical and that period just after half-time where they got two scores ahead, it’s hard to come back away from home when something like that happens.”

Despite the result, Whitten could take solace from Inst scoring four tries against a side two divisions above them.

“You look at the score and maybe think they were away ahead, but it felt close out there,” he added. “It is gutting but I think there are positives to take out of it.

“It’s credit to the guys when they come up against teams like this you can see the boys stand up that bit taller and are ready to fight.

“We can be really proud of the fight that we put in. I think as we progress, and if we can get up into Division 1B, we need to reduce our error rate and probably get a wee bit better at discipline...it’s those small things that add up.

“Two yellow cards and we probably gave away more penalties than them, things like that make it hard to squeeze out a win. Credit to the lads – they showed that they can play at a level like this and that should give us a hunger to try to get to this level and just keep progressing.

“It’s a young side and if we can stick together and keep progressing you never know where we can get to.”

Instonians will now turn their attentions to try and clinch a fourth consecutive promotion.

“We’ll have to recover well, get stuck into it and go again,” said Whitten. “We have a tough block of fixtures but if we can drive it now, we can come out of it looking good in the league.”

Dungannon will face Banbridge in the Senior Cup semi-final after a 40-35 victory at Ballyclare in the last-eight while in the All-Ireland League Belfast Harlequins moved up to second in Division 2C after a 17-16 victory in Tullamore.