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GAELIC FOOTBALL/News round-up: Dublin will start their Leinster senior football championship against Wexford next Saturday with…

Mon May 27 2002 - 01:00

GAELIC FOOTBALL/News round-up: Dublin will start their Leinster senior football championship against Wexford next Saturday with four of the team that recently won the provincial under-21 title. Manager Tommy Lyons announced his team at the weekend for the game in Dr Cullen Park, Carlow, which has a 6.15 p.m. start.

Goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton, who played in last summer's campaign, will be joined in defence by Barry Cahill at right full-back, Paul Casey at right half-back and right full-forward Alan Brogan.

All four were key players in the under-21 win over Wicklow last month, and Casey thus takes over the position Paul Curran has monopolised for the past decade.

Dessie Farrell may have missed the entire league while recuperating from injury yet he starts at full forward alongside Brogan and Ray Cosgrove, who will be making his first championship appearance since the 1999 Leinster final defeat to Meath.

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Colin Moran, whose appearances this year have also been seriously reduced by injury, forms one flank of the half-forward line with Senan Connell on the right and Shane Ryan at centre forward. This is the line-up that started Dublin's challenge game with Cork, which they won by a point.

In all nine players are retained from the side which exited the championship at All-Ireland quarter-final replay stage last August to Kerry at Semple Stadium, Thurles: Paddy Christie, Coman Goggins, Jonathan Magee, Peadar Andrews, Ciaran Whelan, Darren Homan, Moran and Farrell, along with Shane Ryan, who played at right full-back.

The six players who played against Kerry not starting on Saturday are Davy Byrne, Paul Curran, Enda Sheehy, Ken Darcy, Declan Darcy and Jason Sherlock.

• The Ulster championship match between Donegal and Down has been rescheduled for Ballybofey next Sunday at 3.30 p.m. Yesterday's fixture was cancelled after the pitch was declared waterlogged.

DUBLIN (SF v Wexford): S Cluxton; B Cahill, P Christie, C Goggins; P Casey, J Magee, P Andrews; D Homan, C Whelan; S Connell, S Ryan, C Moran; A Brogan, D Farrell, R Cosgrove.