Sheehy axes six from Tipp panel

LAST year’s captain Willie Ryan is one of six players axed from Liam Sheedy’s Tipperary senior hurling championship panel ahead of their big championship clash with Cork at Páirc Uí Chaoimh at the end of next month.

Toomevara clubman Ryan has been let go as Sheedy trims his squad back to 29 players ahead of Sunday’s final NHL outing of the year against Offaly.

However, Sheedy was rocked over the weekend by serious injuries to Paul Kelly and Gearóid Ryan and will look to draft in players from an extended panel to make up the numbers for 15-a-side training matches in the coming weeks.

2005 All Star nominee Micheál Webster has also been dropped from the Premier County squad, along with John Devane, experienced defender Diarmuid Fitzgerald, Pa Bourke and Tom Stapleton.

Webster and Ryan had hoped to push for attacking places.

And Bourke and Stapleton were both members of the 2006 Tipperary All-Ireland MHC winning team, which was managed by Sheedy.

The news was broken individually to all six players last week as Sheedy looks ahead to that runch Munster SHC quarter-final showdown with Cork on May 30.

Meanwhile, Paul Kelly underwent surgery on a broken fibula at Waterford’s Ardkeen Hospital yesterday.

Kelly, 31, sustained the injury during the first half of Mullinahone’s South SHC victory against Ballybacon-Grange at Monroe on Sunday.

Two-time All Star Kelly, older brother of Tipp captain Eoin, was playing his first game for Mullinahone since rejoining the club from Kilkenny outfit O’Loughlin Gaels, whom he linked up with in March 2008.

Kelly is definitely ruled out of the Cork game, which goes ahead in under seven weeks time, and faces an uphill battle to feature in any of the 2010 championship.