Malone and Banbridge primed for crucial Ulster derby clash

The bottom two sides go into a play-off with the loser dropping a division.

Banbridge are currently ninth, a place and five points behind the Gibson Park club.

Bann coach Mark McDowell believes the County Down club are starting to show signs of revival.

“We had two good wins against Old Belvedere and we always knew if we got to Christmas with a win it would set us up for the break,” he said.

“Over the Christmas period we reset our attacking and got a tremendous result at Belvo where it all came together and we played with real speed and width.

“Then we got a losing bonus point at Old Wesley and lost (19-8) at Highfield, but we felt that we could have won both those games and even though those weren’t bad results against the two leading sides in the league that led to a bit of annoyance that we didn’t actually do better.

“We feel we have the pack to take on anyone in this league and we keep having opportunities to win or get losing bonus points but we’re just not converting enough of these chances.

“We know that results in our next three games against Malone, Naas and Navan will go a long way to dictating where we finish.”

Malone won the first meeting of the sides this season 22-21 in Belfast,” said McDowell.

“At Malone we gave away a 77th minute penalty which Rory Campbell converted and we reviewed that pretty hard and, really, it was down to a mistake by a young player under pressure. This will be the fourth time we’ve played them this season, we beat them in the Ulster League but lost in the Senior Cup.

“We’ve lost a lot of games, and though we have no complaints, and that’s credit to the sides we’ve played, a significant portion of these defeats have been self-inflicted in our opinion. We’re heading in with