Instonians' Paul Pritchard hoping to mark milestone 200th All Ireland League appearance with victory in Dublin

“I've been sort of around a long time, I sometimes forget how old I am and it hasn't been that much of a struggle,”said Pritchard. “I'm sort of happy enough with that, 200 games.

“I've said it a couple of times, having Ian Whitten in the team really helps me because he's a guy that has obviously played at the highest level, which is a lot more strenuous on your body.

"He's still in great shape and he still absolutely loves the game, and that's probably been a big motivator for me, keeping me going throughout the year and making sure I get to the gym, and making sure I keep on top of things because if I've got a guy like Ian still doing it a couple of years older than me, then you know what, I still really love playing.

“I'll keep doing it for as long as I can, I think.”

Being appointed player/coach at Instonians gave the backrow a new emphasis to continue in rugby.

“Early on in my career, I probably wasn't the best trainer in the world,” said Pritchard. “I probably wasn't as good as what I should have been around being sort of attentive to training and making sure I trained every Tuesday, Thursday and coaching it's been brilliant for me.

"I think I would have retired a long time ago. I had planned to retire before Instonians asked me to come in to play and coach and I think it's really given me a new lease of life and it's great; I couldn't be happier with what we're doing and how things have went.”

Instonians are chasing a fifth consecutive promotion as Pritchard looks ahead to a “massive” game this weekend.

“Trinity, it's obviously a massive game for the club and it's a real testament to the amount of work that has went in over the last few seasons, we're looking forward to it,” he said.

“I think the general feel around the club is one of huge excitement. We've said to the boys and the boys know that we're proud of what we've done and proud of what we've done this season.

“It's a real testament to the group in terms of where we went, where we came from, to now finish in third and 1B.

“It's a lot of places jumped up the league in a few years. We're excited ultimately, we hope that we get to have another game and that's sort of what we're playing for, so that we can play as a group again one more time for this season.”

Trinity won both league games between the clubs this season but with a few players returning from injury and their pedigree of winning big games on the road, Inst will travel with confidence.

“I think we look back at when we played them down there, like, very, very close to winning that game; could have won it, maybe should have won it and at home the scoreline maybe looked a bit bigger than what the game really was,” he added.

"We had so many opportunities to win that game and we just weren't clinical enough.

“So the sort of focus this week is obviously being really confident because we've been good enough to beat them twice.

“This isn't playing a team which has beat us convincingly either time and [we need to] just to be as clinical as we can with the opportunities that we create. I back the lads 100%, if I was a gambling man, I would bet on us for sure.

“They just have that little bit of something about them. They don't fear anything and they back themselves 100% and I really believe in them to go out and to get a result.”

Dungannon travel to Shannon in the 2A promotion playoff while in 2B Clogher Valley are also in Limerick to face UL Bohs.