I THINK Offaly will beat Wexford. The break from the new league season have Offaly more than any other county. They've been non-stop at the top for four years. Now they've no excuses.

They are playing a team that has won an All-Ireland but that seems to be the limit of what Wexford are geared to do. It's been downhill since with all the celebrations after a first All-Ireland since 1968 being blamed.

My view is that the confidence of being champions should have won games for them in the National League. Instead the opposite has happened and they have begun to lose matches again; worse they've lost a number on close calls. They have got back into a losing mode.

To succeed again, Wexford need to address certain areas of their game. Last year their fitness level was very high and that has to be maintained.

A problem that needs to be solved is their shooting accuracy. Although they won the All-Ireland they had a tendency to shoot wides. Against Kilkenny, they had a lot of the play and scored some great points but also put balls wide.

When you're on top, you have to take a high proportion of chances and not shoot from stupid angles. In that case, you might as well give your opponent the ball and let him drive it 90 yards.

Last week in the Munster semi-final, Limerick had seven first-half wides and Tipperary had only one. Tipperary engineered all their scores in that period from players who weren't under pressure because they'd taken good scoring positions.

Wexford's tendency has been score-and-miss, score-and-miss and by the end of the match they're either a couple of points in front or behind, fighting for their lives.

Even in last year's Leinster final, they only pulled away in the final few minutes when the points were fantastic. They scored from the line and over the shoulder, just like in training where they had obviously done a lot of shooting practice. All a team needs in that situation is for it to click and it did. We had no reply at that stage.

As All-Ireland champions, it's far harder the second time around. I can remember from being a player with Limerick in 1974. In our minds we were working as hard as when we won the All-Ireland but we weren't really. As players we pretended we were but it was only 70 per cent, the rest were hiding and gradually the numbers hiding spread like a virus.

Against Laois, Offaly were very poor. They played too well against Meath - any time we splayed them when I was in charge of Offaly, we only barely beat them. That can have an effect.

If the supporters in Offaly expect you to win, the edge goes off the players. You have to be fearful of the opposition to some extent; otherwise, you're not properly tuned in to a match. Wexford are All-Ireland champions and Offaly know they were bad against Laois so tomorrow will be different.

On the Offaly team, I'm a little worried about Gary Hanniffy at centre half forward. Offaly need a fully fit John Troy to play there. If, as seems the case tomorrow, he isn't fit' he has to play in the corner and drop back because risking him on Liam Dunne, who will come in very hard, doesn't make sense if he's not lOO per cent. But it's not the same and the team loses out.

In the first semi-final, it's great for Dublin to have won seven matches in the league but one of the worries facing Micheal O'Grady is the loss of Liam Walsh in a match when so much depends on the forwards.

Kilkenny have a lot of new faces, playing a first championship match and they have their own problems. They are missing John Power, the type of player Kilkenny revolve around. We're likely to see Dublin spoiling around Kilkenny's half back line because D J Carey needs a good supply.

I'd have to go for Kilkenny because they've more experience and better hurlers, even if Dublin have gone exactly a year since losing a major competitive match and O'Grady has brought great organisation to them.

Their matches have been in Division Two and that's a different pace. It would be great if you'd 32 counties hurling and 14 on the same level, but you don't. It took Cork - who played in Division Two - about 20 minutes to adjust to the speed of the game against Clare two weeks ago.

One question I'd have about the Kilkenny team is some of the positioning. Pat O'Neill at full back is 40 yards further back than at centre back. This robs the attack of his long clearances into the forwards. Willie O'Connor is also on the full back line and the quality of ball he used to deliver from wing back will be missed.

If Dublin can interfere with the ball that is directed into the forwards, Kilkenny will have to forage and hustle for the ball and they don't like doing that. They prefer to move the ball quickly, use their traditionally excellent first touch to get the ball to hand and then lay it off repeating the procedure until they score.

Providing Dublin don't concede a soft goal early on, I think they'll stay with Kilkenny - but not quite until the end.

(In an interview with Sean Moran)