Meath's Trevor Giles, Footballer of the Year in 1996, will be out of football for the rest of the year. Giles sustained a knee injury in the Leinster final nine days ago and needs surgery to rebuild a torn cruciate ligament.

He will not be available to Meath until the later stages of next season's National League. More immediately, he will be unavailable to his Skryne clubmate Colm O'Rourke, who is manager of the Ireland team in October's International Rules series against Australia.

"Trevor went to see Pat O'Neill (Dublin's All-Ireland-winning manager and sports medicine specialist), who sent him for a scan. That showed the cartilage was torn and he'll have an operation on it soon enough. It's normally six months - going well - before you'd be back playing football after that.

"The injury leaves the knee unstable and the cruciate needs to be rebuilt. Physically it can be repaired but the injury also takes a toll on a player's confidence - `Will I go for the next ball or not?'.

Giles is now walking without crutches but is expected to organise surgery as soon as possible. As he is a physiotherapist, Giles can be expected to do all the right things after the operation and maximise his recovery, assuming there are no complications.

The severity of the injury is a harsh irony for a player who, by his own reckoning, has hardly received attention during a match, let alone been substituted, because of injury.

Meanwhile, Kilkenny's hurling manager Kevin Fennelly is confident that he will have a full pick for Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final against Waterford. Johnny Dooley, Charlie Carter and Pat O'Neill have injury problems but, according to Fennelly, there shouldn't be major problems.

"Ninety nine per cent, if not the whole lot, will be available," he says. "I'm not that worried about the injuries but a few players have missed a lot of training. Winning Leinster has turned out to be a great benefit because there's no doubt if we'd played last Sunday, we'd have been in difficulty."

Despite recent negative comparison between the standard of hurling in Munster and Leinster, Fennelly maintains that Sunday's result between Clare and Offaly came as no surprise.

"It was much as I expected. I felt Offaly might catch them on the day although Clare are still the best team in the country. Offaly are hard to beat. Everyone was working up Munster hurling but Offaly are a very hard team to hurl against, their defence is very tight and I can't see many teams putting up big scores on them.

"They won't be happy with what they managed up front but they hurled for 70 minutes."

He doesn't believe there was any significance for Kilkenny in the performance of the team they beat in the Leinster final.

"Not as far as I was concerned. It turned out the way I thought it might. It doesn't affect me at all."

There are mixed reports for last weekend's semi-finalists in advance of their second meeting on Saturday week. Champions Clare will have Brian Lohan back from suspension but half forward PJ O'Connell sustained a broken hand and is extremely doubtful for the replay.

Wing back Liam Doyle looked inhibited by his ankle injury two days ago but the feeling in the county seems to be that two weeks' intensive physiotherapy should clear him to play unless he has aggravated the damage.

There are reservations about the Saturday fixture, as Clare hoped the match would be arranged for Semple Stadium, Thurles the following day, August 23rd, the same date as the Galway-Derry football semi-final scheduled for Croke Park.

It is also expected that Clare centrefielder Colin Lynch, who was banned for three months by last Friday's Munster Council meeting, will have his suspension appealed. Offaly have no injury concerns after the weekend but long-term injury victim Daithi Regan is considered unlikely to recover in time to be available for selection.

In the next two weeks, however, other Offaly players will have time to recover from injuries carried into Sunday's match. John Troy looked a little wobbly, not surprisingly given his car accident less than a fortnight ago which necessitated stitches in facial wounds.

As a result, Troy found himself wearing a helmet for the first time on Sunday - an inhibition he will probably be able to cast aside in the replay. Similarly, Johnny Dooley was only back from a fractured cheekbone and will welcome the extra rehabilitation period.

Joe Erritty, who came on as a substitute, is in the early stages of recovery from a knee injury and he will be strongly in the reckoning for Saturday week.