Cork spring a surprise

Gaelic Games/All-Ireland SHC: Garvan McCarthy is the surprise selection in the Cork team for Sunday's Munster hurling final in Thurles. The young Sarsfields player get his first championship start after last night being named in the right half forward position in the team to play Waterford - and marks one of just two changes from the semi-final win over Limerick.

With Jonathan O'Callaghan and Michael O'Connell ruled out through injury, manager Donal O'Grady was forced into a reshuffle, but only McCarthy's introduction was unexpected. A member of Cork's All-Ireland minor winning team in 2000, he comes into the half forward line along with two other unrelated McCarthy's - Niall and Timmy.

The other change sees Brian Corcoran get his first championship start since 2000. After returning from retirement, Corcoran did appear as a substitute against both Kerry and Limerick, and is named at full forward.

JoeDeane switches to left corner forward and the other positional switches in the reshuffle sees Tom Kenny move to centrefield, as does Jerry O'Connor. John Gardiner drops to the half back line, and team captain Ben O'Connor is named in the right corner forward position. Only the full back linehas avoided any tampering.

Waterford will announce their team after training tomorrow evening, but few if any changes are expected from their semi-final win over Tipp.

Most likely to feature in any shake-up is centre back Tony Browne, who cried off from that game with a hamstring injury, but has returned to full training over the past week.

Sunday's final has already attracted a full house, with both the Cork and Waterford County Boards finding demand to far outweigh their ticket allocation.

A capacity of just under 54,000 had been set for Thurles, but it seems that figure would have been comfortably exceeded if the venue allowed it.

Waterford sold their allocation of 18,000 over the past week and according to county secretary Séamus Grant that fell well short of meeting the demand. "We could have got rid of a lot more than that if we had them," said Grant.

Likewise, the Cork County Board, who got a higher allocation of 21,000 because of their involvement in the minor final, sold out of their lot on Monday.

The next major allocation, which went on sale via the GAA website, also sold out by Monday evening. Incidentally, Waterford's last Munster final win over Cork was in 1959 in a game watched by 55,174 at Thurles.

Meanwhile, Galway manager Conor Hayes has named his starting line-up for Saturday's qualifier match against Down - Galway's first outing of the summer.

Included are two championship debuts, centre back David Collins and midfielder David Hayes.

Otherwise the team follows a familiar format. Fergal Moore returns from injury into the half back line, while David Tierney, who missed out on most of Galway's successful league run, returns to the half forward line alongside Alan Kerins and David Forde. Damien Hayes, as expected, joins Eugene Cloonan and Kevin Broderick in the full forward line.

Galway and Down clash for the second time in three seasons, having previously met in 2002 when Galway won by 7-15 to 0-13 in Casement Park.