Reigning champions have too many options for inexperienced Cork

Cork v Kerry, Pairc Ui Chaoimh, Sunday 4.15pm om RTE 2
Cork and Kerry come into this from radically different semi-finals. The champions survived playing poorly against a good side whereas their challengers played well against poor opposition.

Nonetheless, Cork manager Billy Morgan has dropped his captain, Seán Levis the latest victim of the team's search for a full back that will allow Graham Canty play a more central role.

For tomorrow Morgan takes no chances and selects Canty on the edge of the square.

This is a sensible response to Kerry's anticipated selection of Dara Ó Cinnéide at full forward. Despite a muted preparation for the Limerick match, last year's captain came into the game and transformed the team's possibilities by bringing a physical focus to the attack and giving Colm Cooper someone to play off.

Last year the return of Morgan to the helm in Cork raised hopes that someone who had made a career out of coping with Kerry teams would find a game plan that would work. Instead the team started disappointingly and whatever grand designs they had went up in smoke.

It wasn't that Cork played badly but for all the early pressure they couldn't make a commensurate impact on the scoreboard. Outsiders generally lose a little belief in those circumstances and, just as it had been with Limerick in 2003, so it was for Cork last year.

The need for new players leads Morgan to hand Munster final debuts to seven players. That includes three forwards and the intention is clear: make the most of the chances that are created.

Whether James Masters, Fintan Gould and John Hayes can walk into their first senior championship meeting with Kerry and start kicking points where they left off against Clare is one of the key questions when assessing their team's prospects.

Another is how the Cork defence will cope. They will have been encouraged by the lack-lustre form shown by their opponents in the semi-final. Cooper's match-breaking display apart, there were some disappointed - and disappointing - Kerry forwards in Limerick.

Mike Frank Russell had such an accursed afternoon that it must have thrown his starting place into jeopardy. Declan O'Sullivan's unexpectedly ineffectual display at full forward cast doubt on the notion - enthusiastically subscribed to here at any rate - that by playing him on the 40 the team was sacrificing his scoring potential closer to goal. Tomorrow he reverts to centre forward and in the absence of an improved performance concerns about his form and the effect of captaincy will remain.

There has been some speculation that the introduction of Noel O'Leary to Cork's defence is geared toward switching him onto Paul Galvin but the combustible possibilities of that move surely make it unlikely.

One theory of Kerry's All-Ireland last year was that the campaign was perfectly geared, improving throughout the summer to be at a peak for the All-Ireland. That's grand as a post-hoc rationalisation but close up, poor form looks like poor form and Jack O'Connor knows improvement has to be made in key areas.

It wouldn't do to underestimate Limerick's role in Kerry's disastrous first half. They're one of the few teams with the physical edge to disrupt the champions and they were startlingly dominant everywhere that mattered for those 35 minutes - except in the taking of scores.

That is going to be Cork's make-or-break task: to make the most of chances and that would fire up their inexperienced team and put pressure on Kerry, who would then have a reduced margin of error.

But that scenario asks an awful lot of an inexperienced attack and an uncertain defence. Canty should be a real contest for Ó Cinnéide but he's also going to be needed elsewhere should centrefield go wrong or should Anthony Lynch be required somewhere other than at centre back.

Then they have to handle Cooper and hope Kerry's attack will be as subdued again as well as take the knocks that rattled them last year.

There's some optimism in Cork that the team is improving and on the way back. That optimism can survive but not to the extent that it will be further nourished by a Munster title.

KERRY: D Murphy; A O'Mahony, M McCarthy, T O'Sullivan; T Ó Sé, S Moynihan, M Ó Sé; D Ó Sé, E Brosnan; P Galvin, D O'Sullivan, L Hassett; C Cooper, D Ó Cinnéide, MF Russell.

CORK: K O'Dwyer; N Geary, G Canty, G Murphy; N O'Leary, A Lynch, E Sexton; N Murphy, D Kavanagh; J Masters, C McCarthy, K McMahon; J Hayes, F Gould, M Ó Cróinín.

Referee: D Coldrick (Meath).