Instonians' Paul Pritchard keeping calm over high-stakes Wanderers clash in promotion push

Paul Pritchard’s side have 31 consecutive bonus point wins in the AIL and sit nine points clear of their Dublin visitors with only five games remaining.

“We’ll just treat it like any other game, and I haven’t thought too much ahead,” said Pritchard. “They have to come up and win and if you look at it that way it makes it very exciting, which is good.

"We’re looking forward to it, glad we are at home and it is the reason you play rugby is for this sort of bigger game.

“I’m not going to get a calculator out and work out about the game, just treat it like another game and if we win, we’ll be happier.”

Pritchard was delighted with the fighting spirit Inst showed in last week’s hard-fought derby win at Dungannon.

“It keeps us level headed and grounded a wee bit, it lets everyone know that we have a lot of work to do and it is not going to be plain sailing to the end of the season and that certainly emphasises that there is still plenty of work and improvement,” he said. “Credit to Dungannon they played how we thought they would play and did it very well and we know we are going to have a very stern test this weekend.

“We have worked hard this week and we are as prepared as we can be.

"It felt a lot different to Malahide...at Malahide it felt like we had played poorly and we maybe could have questioned some of the attitude, at Dungannon there was absolutely no question around character and attitude.

“We had to dig in very deep...the character was absolutely outstanding and I said to the lads on Tuesday, you can work on the skills and the detail but you can’t work on that character.

"That can’t be coached and the lads have that in abundance and we are going to need it in this final stretch of the season.”

Anton Lupari and Neil Saulters start in the Inst front row.

Elsewhere, Rainey travel to Dolphin, Belfast Harlequins host Corinthians and Dungannon visit Skerries.

There are a couple of vital games in Division 2A, fourth-placed Banbridge go to Old Crescent, who are a point below them in the play-off race.

Bottom-of-the-table Malone are at the team above them on points difference, Navan. Ballymena travel to Nenagh.

In 2C, leaders Clogher Vally host third-place Bruff, Omagh are home to Clonmel, while Bangor visit Galwegians.

City of Armagh face Division 1A leaders Clontarf at the Palace Grounds hoping for a positive result to pull away from the relegation dog fight.

Chris Parker’s side sit in eighth place after failing to back up their impressive win over Young Munster by losing at UCD last week - but the two teams below them failed to profit.

“The boys knew it themselves afterwards, everyone was hugely disappointed with what we got out of it, we had been in such a good place, we’d had a good training week,” said Parker on the UCD result.

“We just made error upon error in that first 20 minutes and just kept bringing pressure onto ourselves and then really struggled to get any field position and UCD punished us.

“We’ll just dust ourselves off, go again...but we have made life just a wee bit more difficult for ourselves.

“I think it is going to be like that every week now, you try and sort yourself out first, it is probably now a three-way shoot-out between ourselves, Shannon and Trinity.

"And you are certainly going to have a keen eye on everyone else’s results.

“We know we are sitting in eighth, we still have to play Shannon and we still have to play Trinity, it is still within our own hands.

"But we need to try and get something this weekend against Clontarf, which is easier said than done.”

Clontarf are top of the table and arrive in Armagh after beating Ballynahinch last week.

“It is absolutely great, these are the teams that when we got promoted that you wanted to be playing, clubs that are steeped in AIL rugby and history and being able to welcome them to the Palace is great,” he said. “We got blown away a we bit down there by them and they were very impressive that day, hopefully, we’ll see a bit of a reaction now after last week’s inaccuracies.

"If we can be more accurate in and around our 22 entries we’ll give ourselves a shot.

“It was a very impressive result because Hinch have an excellent side and have been going well, we have a huge task in front of us but we are at home and we are fighting hard.”

Hooker James McCormick makes his first appearance in 14 months.

Last week’s defeat saw Hinch lose ground on the top four but they will hope to return to winning ways at home to basement club Trinity.

James French, Greg Jones, Conor McKee and Ben Carson are available.

In 1B, it’s a battle of the basement clubs as Queen’s travel to Buccaneers.

Lock James McKillop makes his Queen’s debut while James Humphreys returns from injury.