Ian O'Riordan talks to Kilkenny selector Noel Skehan about the team's finds at midfield

Noel Skehan rates the new Kilkenny midfield of Derek Lyng and Pat Tennyson as the greatest revelation of the county's progression to Sunday's hurling league final. The Kilkenny management made a special effort this season to bring in new players, and of those Lyng and Tennyson have added the most weight.

Though there have been new successes elsewhere, most notably Martin Comerford in the attack, the new midfield partnership has matured to the extent that both players are likely to press for championships starts.

"What we have now is a completely new midfield," says Skehan, who came in as selector this year after decades of Kilkenny involvement as a player or mentor. "And I expect to see these guys at their best on Sunday, working hard for the team and each other, because midfield has worked out very well for us this season."

Tennyson played Fitzgibbon hurling with UCD this winter and Lyng was with the Emerald's club that won the junior championship in Kilkenny last year.

"Derek Lyng was also on the fringe on the panel last year," adds Skehan, "but both players have made their name now. We tried Derek at centre forward for a while but he's slotted in now very well with Pat.

"And their big quality is their work-rate, which is phenomenal for themselves and the team. They keep to ball moving very fast along the ground and that suits Kilkenny's style of play. They're still young and inexperienced but they're learning and, most of all, they are very keen and anxious to learn."

The Kilkenny management were looking specifically for players who could move around, and Lyng and Tennyson fitted that description. "These two can play in the forwards or the backs. More than anything this year we didn't want to box players into one position. We wanted players that could play in two or three positions and these are players like that. That's probably a move away from the traditional Kilkenny player.

"But when you have players that haven't made it yet, they will play under any conditions to wear the black and amber and these players saw the league as their big chance, and that's why they're in there now. We may make some small adjustments during the championship but as of now that's the best midfield pairing we've got."

The assumption that Kilkenny can just churn out such players at will though, is not quite true, says Skehan. It did take a bit of digging around to uncover the new talent.

"We ended up bringing in 10 new players, but we played six or seven challenge games before Christmas to find them, and played a lot of new players in different positions. We didn't want to nail players down into one position either."

The current team shows that the policy has paid off. "We have JJ Delaney gone out to wing half, Philly Larkin gone back to the corner, and Stephen Grehan played the last two matches at corner forward."

The trio of Charlie Carter, John Power and Eamonn Kennedy are back training with the panel on a regular basis, close now to full fitness and back in the reckoning for the championship places.

DJ Carey remains the only notable absentee from training: "With DJ it's different because he's under medical supervision and his neck is still troubling him. He had a run-out with Gowran and we are in contact with him the whole time, but there's nothing he can do for the moment."