Being honest, with so many teams, including ourselves, using the SONI league games as an extended pre-season, fine tuning combinations and working hard on their fitness throughout September, then you don’t really know where you stand until that first AIL game.

I thought our performance against Sunday’s Well was the best I had seen from us so far, we adapted well to the conditions, which were pretty horrendous, our set piece functioned well, we were composed and accurate with the ball, and worked hard and were disciplined in defence. We executed our basics, and as a result deserved the win on the day.

It was nice to see so many smiling faces up in the bar after the game but I would always be conscious of not reading too much in to one performance, especially so here where 12 months ago the lads were in a similar position, starting off the season really well before falling away and having a tough season. Good sides produce consistently, and we have the ability to do that, so we confronted that challenge head on this week, and far from enjoying the win and patting ourselves on the back we’ve had a really tough week’s training.

We’ll have to step up our performance again if we are going to get anything out of our trip to Midleton on Saturday, who will be keen to bounce back from their opening day defeat, but we are capable of doing just that if we can build on last week.

1st XV Selection may be tweaked but will be broadly similar to last week, having come through last week with a clean bill of health. Andrew Shaw, Rhys Larmour and Thomas Boyd return from unavailability last week to add to the competition for places and will feature either at Midleton or for the 2nds away at Ballymoney - let’s hope for two good performances.