No need for AIL 'major surgery' as Instonians target return to winning ways
After two consecutive defeats, Instonians will aim to get their promotion push from Division 1B back on track this weekend as they travel to leaders Old Wesley.
Defeat last Saturday at home to Trinity has left Paul Pritchard’s side third – eight points behind the table-toppers with four games remaining,
“I think we're not going to make excuses, we're unhappy with how Saturday went, you can't make that amount of errors and you can't refuse to play shape at this level and get away with it,” said Pritchard. “We fully deserve to come away from that game with nothing, I'm not sure if the two weeks off did us any favours.
"Losing a guy like the skipper, David (Whitten), who's obviously a great line-out leader.
"A great leader on the pitch and a fantastic player...probably hurt us quite a bit.
“We certainly felt like we missed him, but we've got to fix that quickly.
"I think probably the biggest disappointment was we failed to get into shape and we failed to look after the ball.
"It's something we've got to fix and hopefully we can fix it quickly.
“I don’t think at this stage of the season anything is needing major surgery, I think what we've done throughout the year can build up to where it is.
“Some of the errors are glaringly obvious and we can go through them pretty easily, but you can't overreact to these things, we were just off it as a team individually.
“We've got to just remember how well we've played this year and how good we are as individuals and as a team, take confidence from that and try and get a bit of momentum going into the last few games here.”
Old Wesley also go into the game having lost their last two matches and Instonians had a comprehensive 36-14 win when the sides met at Shaw’s Bridge in October.
But Pritchard knows the Dubliners are a different proposition on the artificial surface at Donnybrook.
“The league is opening up, I think the run-in is going to be very difficult here as well,” he said. “Obviously Wesley is having a bit of a wobble up there but they know their destiny is in their own hands.
“They'll be absolutely gunning for us on Saturday, we're expecting an incredibly difficult game.
"But we know we let ourselves down last week, we know we're better than that.
"The challenge is to make sure that we show it this week.
“I think we got our game plan right against them at Shaw's...that was the first game they'd lost and the only game they'd lost for a long time.
“We know we've got what it takes to do it.
"It's just a case of us being able to go down and getting our performance right.
“Get our game plan right and have that mentality to go and do it.”
Whitten faces a prolonged period on the sidelines, while Lorcan McLoughlin is ineligible to play as he hasn’t featured in enough games for the club to figure across the last four fixtures.
Ali Burke continues in Whitten’s absence at No8, Oli Clarke returns at hooker as Ulster’s John Andrew is unavailable but Callum Reid takes his place in the front row.
Eoghan Murphy starts in the second row.
Behind the scrum, Ruairi O’Farrell moves to out half, with Mathew Neill taking the No9 shirt.