COACH CALLS FOR FINAL PUSH

The Eaton Park men are well-placed for an instant return to Division 1B as they sit third in Division Two, well adrift of the top two of UCD and Ballynahinch, but with a game in hand.

Ballymena will aim to secure one of the automatic promotion places – the fifth-placed team will play-of against the bottom team in 1B – in their four games which remain, the first of which is an Ulster ‘derby’ against Belfast Harlequins at Eaton Park this Saturday.

“That will be a huge game with both ourselves and Harlequins going for promotion, while two of the other teams in the hunt – Bective Rangers and Corinthians – also play each other this Saturday, so this weekend could go a long way to deciding who goes up,” Andrews told Tiems Sport.

“We’re happy with our position in the league and we can hopefully strengthen that position further.

“Our home form has been good and we have managed to pick up 10 bonus points, seven of them for scoring four or more tries in a game.

“That is very pleasing, particularly as the lack of bonus points last season was ultimately a factor in our relegation.

“Division Two has certainly lived up to our expectations of how tough it would be but we have beaten teams like Bective and Midleton with bonus point wins.

“It has been a feature of this division that you have to battle for an hour and often the bonus point issues are settled in the last 20 minutes of games when teams are tiring.

“The only down side has been the disruption caused by the loss of Ulster and Irish under-20 players – that was particularly evident in our defeats to Malone and De La Salle Palmerston.

After this Saturday’s game, Ballymena face trips to Corinthians (April 2) and Old Wesley (April 9) before completing their campaign at home to Terenure on April 16.

Meanwhile, Ballymena closed a largely disappointing Ulster Senior League campaign with a 29-39 defeat by City of Derry on Saturday, with Andrews admitting his side “haven’t been competitive enough” in that competition.

“Again, we lost players to Ulster commitments, for example Paul Pritchard has maybe been playing during the week for Ulster Ravens and we had to rest him for Ulster League games, while we also tried to give some of the older players like Darrell O’Kane a break as well, in order to have them fully-fit for the AIL games.

“It enabled us to give some of the young players at the club a chance and against Queen’s recently we had six teenagers in the starting line-up, which is unheard of,” added Andrews.