Holders Methody begin Schools’ Cup defence away to Belfast Royal Academy in tricky opener

Methody beat Campbell in last year’s St Patrick’s Day decider to lift the trophy for a 37th time.

Despite producing players of the calibre of Jack Kyle and Iain Henderson, BRA have only ever lifted the Schools’ Cup once back in 1997 and have lost five finals.

Coach DJ Creighton feels that while the north Belfast school maybe a sleeping giant, rugby is thriving at BRA.

“Our rugby is in a really good place and I suppose in terms of numbers with the boys playing we’re delighted where we’re at,” he said.

"We’ve some very competitive sides coming through so I think the big thing from our point of view is that boys are really enjoying playing rugby again.

“It’s a huge outlet for young people and they need it, so we’re just absolutely delighted to provide that as a service. From our point of view it’s what we love doing and we take a real pride in regularly fulfilling our fixtures and we have an ‘A’ and ‘B’ team out at all levels.”

While drawing the defending champions wasn’t the tie anybody wanted Creighton is relishing the prospect of facing Methody, especially at home.

“It’s a fantastic challenge and one we’ll be incredibly motivated for,” he said.

“We’re delighted to be at home at Roughfort and we’re well aware it’s a real fortress and teams don’t particularly like travelling there, so hopefully that’ll be the case.

“We’re really motivated by it and motivated by the challenge, and we’ve a really good group of guys this year who are really committed – there’s talent in our squad.

“We’ll focus on ourselves and look after our own house and hopefully do the job on the day,” added Creighton.

“We’ll do our homework on them and try and analyse where they’re strong and try to deal with that.”

Creighton has been happy with how BRA’s season has been going so far.

“I’ve been pleased with the season so far but this is the making of it and hopefully we’ll be in good shape come the end of January,” he said.

“We had a couple of good wins early doors against the likes of Ballyclare, Sullivan and Armagh. [We] played Methody and lost to them narrowly at Roughfort.

“We’ve been in the fight in most of the big games against those top three or four sides, we just haven’t come out the right side of the results.

“And [we had] some good wins against the likes of Bangor and Regent and I felt we’d played really well on those days, so we’ll need a mix of that and be at our very best and we’re really looking forward to it.”

Fixtures: Ballymena Academy v Campbell College (11.00am); Dromore HS v Down HS (10.30am); RS Dungannon v Ballyclare HS (11.00am); Coleraine GS v Limavady GS (10.30am); Sullivan Upper v RS Armagh (10.30am); Belfast Royal Academy v Methodist College (10.30am); Wallace HS v Foyle College (11.00am); Enniskillen Royal GS v RBAI (11.00am).