St Mary's Athenry (Galway) v Graigue-Ballycallan (Kilkenny), 2.0, TG4

Athenry are a great team. During the past few years of exceptional club sides, the Galway champions have stamped their greatness on the AIB club championship. Last year Birr and St Joseph's DooraBarefield - their most plausible contemporaries - were defeated, and now Athenry aim to join fellow Galway club Sarsfields as the only back-to-back champions in the championship's history.

Like all great teams, the Connacht champions can play it any way their opponents want. Solid goalkeeper, a pressing defence, pace in the corners, strength in the middle, both the club game's most obvious target man and its most prolific scorer, the champions have a formidable range of ammunition. Sunshine - last year's semi-final - or rain - the deluged Galway final of last autumn - Athenry will cope.

Graigue-Ballycallan have their own strengths, primarily a lovely, fast, sure-striking attack which should have delivered a comfortable semi-final win. That it didn't is the main reason their chances of causing an upset have to be viewed sceptically. Sixmilebridge's defence looked too slow to cope but managed to hang on grimly enough to create the chance of what would have been an astonishing success.

In the drawn match as well, the Kilkenny team blinked on the verge of success with nearly fatal consequences. Their defence appears to be too brittle - with the exception of the ever more impressive Johnny Butler - to weather the varied ferocities of the Athenry attack.

To pull this out of the hat, Graigue-Ballycallan need to tighten up considerably on finishing, have Adrian Ronan in the form of the drawn semi-final rather than the replay, Denis Byrne vice versa and to win and clear more ball that was the case in either of those matches against the Bridge.

For all the stylishness of the Leinster champions' play, that scale of improvement looks beyond them.

ATHENRY: M Crimmins; E Keogh, G Keane, J Feeney; B Higgins, B Feeney, Paul Hardiman; B Keogh, P Hardiman; J Rabbitte, P Higgins, D Moran; C Moran, E Cloonan, D Donohoe.

GRAIGUE-BALLYCALLAN: J Ronan; J Butler, P O'Dwyer, J Ryall; P McCluskey, T Comerford, A Hoyne; E O'Dwyer, J Young; D Byrne, J Hoyne, M Hoyne; A Ronan, T Dermody, E Brennan.