Cats are set to hook, block and harry

AS Tipperary and Kilkenny head into their 17th All-Ireland championship meeting, the weight of history sits light on the broad shoulders of Cats captain Andy Comerford.

To date, Tipp have pretty much dominated the series, leading 11-5 in head-to-heads, but that doesn't bother the hard-charging midfielder.

"Before my time," he says dismissively. "Wexford, Clare, Offaly, Cork; those are our main rivals, this team has played them a lot more often than Tipperary. In fact, the vast majority of us have never played Tipperary in the championship, '91 was the last time, and I certainly wasn't playing then.

"That rivalry is from way back, up to the 60s, and as far as I'm concerned, that's when it should have been sorted out. This is just a game like any other game, that's how we're approaching it, and the way I see it, it's going to be close, very close."

What is bothering the Kilkenny captain, however, is a different advantage Tipperary might have. Having lost the Munster final, Tipperary have come through the new qualifier system, with two games under their belt since that single loss; in the meantime, as Leinster champions, Kilkenny have been waiting.

As Clare showed last week when beating Munster champions Waterford, that recent championship action can be a decided advantage and can prove decisive.

"Last year, we won the Leinster title easily enough, but we had a big break then to the All-Ireland semi-final, which cost us. At the beginning of the year, when we set out our stall, we felt that to rectify what went wrong , we had to get things right this year for the semi-final. We've trained with match intensity in the training sessions, which wasn't there last year, and we found to our cost that if you drop that intensity in training, you can't expect to just turn it on again in a match, that's not going to happen."

Training is fine, even hard training, but championship games are what really forges the steel, and Andy is fully aware of that. "There's no substitute for hard matches, that's a fact, but we have trained very hard. On Sunday we'll know how well it's gone, how detrimental the lay-off has been."

By contrast, Tipp's concerns in that area aren't as serious. "Waterford caught them in the Munster final, showed up a few weaknesses. Antrim made it even worse for us, it gave Tipp sort of a second opinion on their ailments, if you like, problems which we could see, but they weren't really proved till that game. By the sounds of their team now, they've made wholesale changes, and it's probably for the better for them, but not for us. They're going to be well tuned for this game now, no doubt about it."

While Tipp haven't impressed in either of the games mentioned, Waterford and Antrim, big Andy isn't going on that form, but on the more vintage Tipperary, the side that conquered all before them last year; the side that gave Limerick a thumping in Munster.

"They were very impressive in that game, though how good Limerick were is debatable now, given the problems they had. But I'd say Tipperary are very happy with the position they're in, going into Sunday. They're after discovering their weaknesses, and have done something about it, juggled their team around a bit. As a unit they're very strong, and their forwards are fairly formidable. Eoin Kelly, O'Meara, O'Leary, Benny Dunne, a slippery customer, good for three or four points a game; O'Neill, with John Carroll creating all the breaks for them, well able to take a score himself as well give them a look at the posts, and they'll score.

"If we want to win this match, we're going to have to hook, block and harry, those are the three buzz-words, the philosophy of any good trainer I'd say. There's been a great atmosphere around the place since the Leinster final, great crowds at training goes back to the old rivalry, I suppose. It would be nice to keep that going, but we have to rock-and-roll this Sunday."