Guessing begins with two vacancies

Kilkenny and Offaly have left a vacancy on their teams in advance of Sunday's Guinness All-Ireland hurling final in Croke Park…

Kilkenny and Offaly have left a vacancy on their teams in advance of Sunday's Guinness All-Ireland hurling final in Croke Park. When the counties met in July's Leinster final, there was a Johnny Dooley on each team. Now both have selected an A N Other.

Offaly will wait before filling the left half forward position. The decision will probably rest between Paudie Mulhare, who returned to action in the third match against All-Ireland champions Clare after the death of his father, and Gary Hanniffy who scored three points after replacing Mulhare.

It had been thought that Mulhare would start again, leaving Hanniffy available to come into the match as a replacement, a role which has show-cased some of his best performances this year.

Offaly have overcome the injury problems that threatened the participation of two heroes of the Clare victory, goalkeeper Stephen Byrne and left corner back Martin Hanamy.

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Kilkenny's vacancy is at right corner forward. Shane Prendergast who has torn a hamstring, is the only player missing from the line-up which defeated Waterford by a point in last month's semi-final.

Prendergast's replacement that day, Niall Moloney, is the most likely candidate for the vacancy but manager Kevin Fennelly and his selectors have decided to wait until the weekend before finalising the position.

The team is much as expected. It had been known all week that Prendergast was struggling with injury and his incapacity has ruled him out of even a place on the bench. Moloney was thought to be the probable replacement but others with experience of the position such as Denis Byrne and Ken O'Shea have been mentioned.

Nonetheless Byrne hasn't featured much this year whereas O'Shea has been involved only as a substitute and despite some impressive scores, is felt to be better suited to coming into a match rather than starting.

This will be Kilkenny's first All-Ireland in five years and the team is quite inexperienced at this level. Only five have started an All-Ireland final before and of those, only D J Carey played in all three of the county's finals earlier this decade, the defeat against Tipperary in 1991 and the subsequent victories over Cork and Galway.

Willie O'Connor and Pat O'Neill, man of the match in that year's final, played with Carey in 1992 whereas a year later, Liam Keoghan and P J Delaney joined them.

By contrast Offaly have plenty of experience at this level. Eleven of the team which started the 1995 All-Ireland against Clare are in Sunday's line-up whereas 10 started the previous year's final against Limerick which was Offaly's last success at this level.

Their forward formation will be treated with some scepticism as out of 18 starting positions in attack, six in each of the three semi-final matches against Clare, only two lined out as selected.

This will be the first time two Leinster counties will contest an All-Ireland final. Like last year's final between Clare and Tipperary, Sunday's meeting will reprise the provincial final. Twelve months ago, Clare were heavily favoured to repeat their victory in the 1997 Munster final but this weekend's All-Ireland is very evenly balanced.

Offaly feel they should have done better in the Leinster final last July. Two goals from DJ Carey frees in eight minutes at the start of the last quarter effectively decided the match for Kilkenny but both teams have improved in the meantime.

The Leinster champions have remained quite consistent in their selection with the back nine from the provincial final remaining intact. In attack there have been two changes, maybe only one.

Johnny Dooley started centre forward and is among the substitutes for Sunday. And Niall Moloney is also on the bench pending the announcement of AN Other's identity.

Offaly - who have of course changed managers since July - show more changes than their opponents. Colm Cassidy and Barry Whelahan are on the bench with Hubert Rigney, who missed the Leinster final with injury, and Simon Whelahan, who replaces his brother, coming into the team in defence.

Up front, Darren Hanniffy and John Ryan are now among the replacements. Into their places come Joe Errity and probably Mulhare.