GAELIC GAMES:ON A FAR from routine night for team news before tomorrow's GAA All-Ireland hurling final replay, there are fears that Galway goalkeeper James Skehill may not make the team to face Kilkenny after sustaining a shoulder injury in training.

Skehill was named on the team named last night but if ruled out, reserve keeper Fergal Flannery will take over in an otherwise unchanged team.

Kilkenny, no strangers themselves to pulling rabbits out of the hat when it comes to All-Ireland selections, have made two changes from the drawn encounter three weeks ago.

Out go forwards Colin Fennelly and Aidan Fogarty, to be replaced by two under-21s, Cillian Buckley, who has already played in the senior championship, and Walter Walsh, who makes his championship debut.

This is a bold selection by Brian Cody and his management, who have addressed two areas of concern: Galway’s domination of centrefield in the Leinster final and drawn All-Ireland as well as the unimpressive performance of the forwards.

Buckley is named at wing forward but will be expected to feature in the middle with Richie Hogan, who started there the last day in place of the injured Michael Rice, now able to revert to his more usual role in attack.

Walsh, who played well for the under-21s team that lost this month’s All-Ireland final, is named at full forward.

On the evidence to date, the champions are right to be concerned. They have had a stuttering campaign, speeding through what was expected to be hostile terrain against Dublin and Tipperary, only to cut out on the next journey.

The most striking feature of the drawn All-Ireland was the failure to respond to a team that had annihilated them just weeks previously and the extent to which Henry Shefflin, who like any player in pursuit of a record ninth All-Ireland medal might have expected to receive some assistance to that milestone, had to make all the running himself in a galvanic second half.

For Kilkenny, the inability to make it out of the traps until Galway are nearly out of sight has meant that over two finals this summer they have yet to defeat Anthony Cunningham’s side. But conversely Galway have retreated in each second half and suffered on the scoreboard each time.

The most reliable rules of replays state that the winners will have a) learned more from the draw and b) have more room for improvement, but this doesn’t clarify matters an awful lot, seeing as both have plenty to learn from what has happened in the two matches to date.

Kilkenny need to control Joe Canning’s influence because if Galway are to win, he’ll axiomatically have had a major bearing on the match, but his own team have to optimise that role because the tactics the last day marginalised him in the second half.

Yet behind that central concern lies some encouragement for Brian Cody. The other forwards who had done such damage in July were well marked in the All-Ireland match-ups. Cyril Donnellan, albeit troubled by injury, may have occupied Tommy Walsh in a more recessive role but he didn’t score anything let alone five points from play.

Paul Murphy was very effective on David Burke and kept him scoreless, another five-point gain on the Leinster final, and Jackie Tyrrell’s tracking of Damien Hayes greatly reduced the Portumna man’s influence around the middle.

Although this suggests plenty of room for improvement on the part of Galway’s forwards, most attention has inevitably focused on the much-decorated Kilkenny forwards’ under-performance.

Nowhere is the need for improvement more marked than at centrefield where Galway have done as well as feasibly possible in both of the matches to date.

It remains to be seen how Buckley, who like the rest of the team struggled in the Leinster final at centrefield, can reverse the trend there and provide Michael Fennelly with the support to regain his best form. If that happens it will go a long way to deciding the outcome of the MacCarthy cup.

The pattern is largely established at this stage and both managers will be trying to optimise performance

There is a template for Kilkenny. When county champions Ballyhale played Portumna of Galway two years ago in an All-Ireland club final featuring a number of tomorrow’s protagonists, the Kilkenny side deprived their opponents of the oxygen of a prolific opening, as had proved decisive when the clubs met in the previous year’s All-Ireland semi-final, although Canning did get an opportunity which he didn’t convert.

Canning has been on the scoreboard with a goal in the opening minutes of both matches this championship and Kilkenny will be expected to do what Mayo footballers didn’t last week – park the bus in the first phase of the match and stop the challengers establishing another substantial first-half lead.

Significantly Kilkenny have acted to address the flaws in their performance the last day, whereas Galway have been forced in the other direction – worrying about the fitness of a key player.

That turn in fortune has accentuated what was already an advantage for the champions and it’s likely that Henry Shefflin will claim his ninth All-Ireland medal tomorrow and his remarkable team another back-to-back set of titles.