City of Armagh and Ballynahinch both relishing historic All-Ireland League Division 1A Ulster derby clash

Armagh sit ninth having lost their last four matches while Hinch are a point outside the play-off places after their four-game unbeaten run was ended by Young Munster last weekend.

Armagh coach Chris Parker is hoping for a big day – and result – at the Palace Grounds.

“There is fantastic excitement about it around the club in general,” he said. “The pre-match has been sold out for weeks. The second XVs are kicking off at 1pm and it should just make for a really good day.

“It is one that all members of the club are looking forward to and I’d say Ballynahinch are the same.

“It would send us into the Christmas break with a wee bit more positivity. We feel that we have been producing some good positive performances and just haven’t been getting the rewards or the bounce of the ball at times.

“This would be great just to try and get us on the road again and give us a bit of momentum after the Christmas break.”

Parker has identified areas for improvement and wants his side to start quickly after leaking an early try in last weekend’s 29-17 defeat to Terenure.

“We have spoken this week about our starts,” he added. “We gave Terenure an easy score to begin with and then we got ourselves back in the game and managed to give them another easy score and the same just after half time.

“Those moments are really important and we are losing those key momentums at the minute. We have to make sure that we try to address that and make sure that we are focused and concentrated right from the get go and don’t give ourselves to much to do to get back into matches.

“We are scoring three tries, but obviously to win games you have got to score more points. We’re working hard at that and again we had opportunities that we butchered at the weekend.”

Ballynahinch coach Adam Craig is hoping his side can bounce back from last week’s disappointment.

“We are really excited about it,” he said. “It was probably the one you look at on the calendar, circle it and say when we are going there.

“There has been a lot of chat about it which has been great. Off the back of last week, we want to rectify our own performance first.

"Home victories are really important to us and I suppose we took our eye off the ball in the second-half and had a couple of discipline things go wrong, some set-piece issues – we’ll rectify that this week and hopefully be ready for Armagh.

“They have done really well and it is well documented they have come up through the leagues pretty quickly. We have full respect for them and we’ll prepare for them like we’d prepare for any other team in 1A. There are a lot of links and a lot of respect between the two clubs so it will be a good battle.”

“I think as the break comes around, we’d love to be up and around the top four. The teams above are pretty renowned for being in that mix every year so to be in their company is pretty enjoyable.”

For Armagh, Ulster back Shea O’Brien is released while Nigel Simpson is back in the squad.

Hinch have James French, Cormac Izuchukwu, Rueben Crothers, Conor McKee and Aaron Sexton available.