Kilkenny v Tipperary preview: This has become the contemporary game's most eventful pairing. Tomorrow's meeting is the fourth in a year and allowing for a number of interesting sub-plots the main theme has been that Kilkenny have won when it mattered.

Twelve months ago, although the match was rapturously received, there was a sense of fatigue about Tipperary. They got to the final 10 minutes still within touch on the scoreboard but without having done anything to suggest they would win a shootout with their livelier opponents.

Such a situation isn't unusual for defending champions, the last six of whom have lost at this stage of the championship. Yet few believe it's going to be a factor for Kilkenny this weekend.

Manager Brian Cody has paid particular attention to keeping things fresh this year, cautioned by the memory of what Galway did two years ago when Kilkenny were last in this position.

The champions' low-key progress this far means their appetite hasn't been fully tested but this match is less about any notional deterioration on their part than about the all-too-evident slippage in Tipperary's fortunes.

After a National League campaign that suggested they were the only side with the firepower to match Kilkenny, Tipp have suffered a number of untimely knocks. The principal one is the loss of Philip Maher at full back. He sustained cruciate damage in last May's league final between the counties and the four-goal avalanche that followed in his absence was a grim portent of things to come.

Paul Ormond is also missing with long-term injury and he stood out in last year's semi-final. Add the uncertainty over Tommy Dunne and it's unarguable that Tipp are weaker than they were 12 months ago. The defence has proved fairly porous at the end of the last two matches, against Offaly and Galway - even if they had enough in the bank.

They still don't have a settled look in attack. Conor Gleeson is named at full forward but aside from lacking the nimbleness and craft which comes from experience in the position, he isn't in the best of form.

Defence has a job on its hands. Dunne has to take care of Henry Shefflin, a daunting task even for the fully fit - and it's impossible that Dunne will be 100 per cent.

Tom Costello, having been discarded earlier in the year, is back on the team with something to prove against DJ Carey, who marked his return last year by making Costello's life miserable.

There is merit in saying that Kilkenny haven't looked great under pressure. Tipp threatened to go to town on them in the league final, and at half-time in the Leinster final they weren't looking in great shape. Wexford's fine displays since then have given a new context to Kilkenny's difficulties with them, but Wexford weren't happy with the Leinster final and have improved greatly since.

Anyway the argument stripped bare is that Kilkenny look shaky under pressure until they go up a gear and do something about it. The question here is how capable Tipperary are of exerting the sort of pressure that can't be resisted.

The champions' centrefield has been unsettled but the Leinster final saw Derek Lyng back to his best form and if Conor Phelan's second-half awakening came too late to save his place, the team didn't suffer unduly in the sector. Paddy Mullally comes in still rejoicing in the description of former Kilkenny football captain but his performance in the 1999 Leinster final was good - if understandably not good enough to displace Peter Barry.

And it's not as if Cody doesn't have options. Tommy Walsh can be switched and more significantly Andy Comerford is back on the panel. This match last year was his best of the season and he'd be a highly charged replacement to spring if Eddie Enright and Benny Dunne were getting on top.

The two Leinster final debutants played well, Sean Dowling to the extent that he was named Man of the Match. James Ryall would be vulnerable to the right type of ball into Eoin Kelly, but who's going to deliver plentiful supplies of that?

Kilkenny have the disadvantage of a long lay-off while their opponents have been playing matches but to an experienced team that largely knows its best configuration, a few weeks training away on its own isn't the end of the world.

Tipp have the deeper-rooted problem of appearing unsure of themselves since the thrashing by Clare. Maybe this will fire them up. Maybe Kilkenny's year as champions has left them a bit soft.

But it doesn't look that way.