Eamonn Corcoran: Backing Tipp to shade final by a couple of points.

I WOULD say the first half, even the first 60 minutes of the game, will be very, very tight.

My gut feeling is that Tipp, in the last 10 minutes when the game opens up a bit, with the forwards they have like Lar Corbett and the lads they’ll bring off the bench, will open up the Kilkenny back line at that stage. I can definitely see Kilkenny dropping their half-back line back in front of the full-back line and the midfield playing a lot deeper, to really put pressure on the Tipp forwards.

That could be dangerous for us at the far end of the field because it might leave space for the Richie Hogans, the Richie Powers and the Eoin Larkins who can burn you for pace and exploit any space they get.

So we’ll have to see how Tipp react to that if it happens. But the one thing neither of the teams will do is show any weakness on the sideline. You can be sure of that. They’ll have respect for each other but they’ll go man to man and mark 15 against 15.

There won’t be any sweepers dropping back or anything like that which shows the slightest bit of fear. There will be 30 players on the field and, in fairness, if there was a weak link among them it would have been exposed long before this final. I’d go with Tipp narrowly if I had to call it. Maybe by two or three points and I don’t think you’ll see that gap emerging until the last few minutes of the contest.