Skipper aims for flying start to AIL campaign

The Braidmen, relegated from Division 1B on the last day of last season begin their bid for promotion from Division Two with a trip to County Cork to face minnows Midleton.

Skipper Darrell O'Kane is hoping that the Blacks can begin their bid to escape the third tier of Irish rugby with a positive result.

"There are four teams definitely going up and the fifth team has a possibility of going up so we want to get off to a good start and set down a benchmark for the rest of the AIL campaign," Darrell told Times Sport.

"We will be going off the beaten track a bit, to places and teams that Ballymena teams have never gone before and it will be a test for everyone against different opposition.

"Midleton will be a typically strong Munster team with a fairly large forward pack and I believe they have a Munster-contracted player on their books.

"They came up well last season so they will be no pushovers and I would expect some fairly attritional rugby.

"Hopefully though we can get off to a good start and encourage more people to come and watch us at home."

The bitter memories of an unexpected relegation on the last day of last season, when Ballymena lost at Ballynahinch and other results went against them, are still fresh for O'Kane and his team-mates.

"Mathematically we probably thought we were OK but we failed to take care of the situation ourselves. We probably fell into the trap of thinking we would be OK and complacency maybe set in.

"But we feel we are in a much better position than we were this time last year.

"We've made a reasonably good start to our Ulster League campaign and we've already scored more try bonus points in our first four games than we did in the whole competition last season.

"We're trying to rebuild step by step but we have identified players who should be available to us week in, week out throughout the season which will add a bit of stability to the team," added Darrell.