All-Ireland winning captain Tommy Dunne returns to the Tipperary starting line-up for Sunday's final regulation match of the league, against Waterford in Thurles. Dunne replaces Lar Corbett who started at full forward in last weekend's win over Galway and mirrors the change made at half-time by manager Ken Hogan and his selectors.
A good win at the weekend will put Tipperary in with a strong chance of reaching the NHL final for a second successive year.
Galway have made two changes after last week's defeat. Fergal Moore has to miss the match because of exams and into the team at left wing back comes David Collins who came on for the other wing back Derek Hardiman in the Tipperary match and who impressed at centrefield when coming on as a replacement at centrefield in the win over Cork a fortnight ago.
Mark Kerins is the only player dropped, reverting to the bench after an indifferent display in Thurles.
Adrian Cullinane replaces Kerins and despite his return from injury as a replacement at the weekend, Rory Gantley remains on the bench.
Having been favourites to reach the final after the display against Cork, Galway have complicated their task by losing to Tipperary, but a good win over Limerick at Pearse Stadium would probably mean success for the home side.
Clare haven't yet given up on Ollie Baker being fit for the floodlit match against Cork in Páirc Uí Rinn on Saturday evening. Baker suffered a facial injury at training last Saturday and sustained bad bruising, but according to PRO Des Crowe: "It looked horrible last night, black and blue but as far as I know he hasn't been ruled out just yet.
"The plan was to play all the regulars who didn't feature last week, like Brian Lohan, Frank Lohan, Colin Lynch and Baker while resting others. But it's not quite clear if the manager's going to do that now."
Manager Anthony Daly ran the rule over the players in a practice match against the county under-21s and the feeling is that Seán McMahon and Brian Quinn could do with some more match practice with the Munster first round against Waterford coming up three weeks after this weekend.
The match will be played on Saturday, despite the closeness of the qualification position in the table.
Cork can't reach the final, but Clare could. But once the Galway-Limerick match had to go ahead early on Sunday afternoon in order to facilitate the NFL semi-final replay on the same bill in Salthill, the pressure to start all matches simultaneously waned.
Cork denied that they applied to have the match played on Saturday because of Munster's big rugby semi-final on Sunday.
"It suits a lot of people to be able to see the rugby, but that wasn't the reason. We put in requests to have all our matches played under lights," said county chairman Jim Forbes.
"But Tipperary declined and Waterford asked not to because they had players involved with their clubs on the Friday night. Clare also asked to have it played on Saturday and we were glad when GAC gave it the go-ahead.
"We thought that Croke Park would want the games on at the same time, but there was nothing they could do about Galway-Limerick." Limerick supporters in Galway will be able to catch all but a few minutes of rugby once the hurling match, which starts early, is over.
TIPPERARY (SH v Waterford): B Cummins; P Curran, P Maher, M Maher; E Corcoran, D Fanning, D Fitzgerald; E Enright, P Kelly; T Scroope, J Carroll, B Dunne; P O'Brien, T Dunne, E Kelly.
GALWAY (SH v Limerick): L Donoghue; D Joyce, D Cloonan, O Canning; D Hardiman, David Hayes, D Collins; T Regan, F Healy; A Cullinane, D Forde, A Kerins; Damien Hayes, E Cloonan, K Broderick.
