WHILE Mayo keep their attitudes under wraps for the moment, Galway, Cork and Kerry have played their cards face up insofar as Sunday's Connacht and Munster football finals are concerned.
Mayo remain tight-lipped about their selection for their clash with neighbours Galway in Castlebar on Sunday - even though their selectors are believed to have made their decisions last night.
Cork have left one of their midfield positions vacant in the hope that Danny Culloty may be fit to play beside Liam Honohan in that crucial position, but hopes are slim that the American-born player will be fit to turn out.
Otherwise Cork remain unchanged from the team which beat Clare in the semi-final apart from the fact that Paul McGrath comes in at full forward for John O'Driscoll, who was injured in the Clare match and is ruled out by an achilles tendon injury.
Cork will feel reasonably confident as far as their defence is concerned with Brian Corcoran manning the full back position and a player of the calibre of Niall Cahalane available to be drafted into the team in the event of Culloty being ruled out.
Cork would appear to have a very strong attack with experienced players such as Don Davis, Joe Kavanagh and McGrath available and in very good shape
Kerry have picked a reasonably predictable team with only two alterations from the selection which beat Waterford in the semi-final. Sean Burke is back in the side in place of John O'Connell while Seamus Moynihan comes in for Donal Daly.
Morgan Nix, a regular in the side for some time is still out through injury and another regular Sean Geaney, with Nix, is named in the substitutes as is goalkeeper Peter O'Leary.
The midfield pairing features Seamus Moynihan and Dara O Se with Gene "Bingo" O'Driscoll on the right wing of the attack and Maurice Fitzgerald on "the forty". Liam Hassett is at full forward and Dara O Cinneide is in the left corner of the attack.
Galway have surprised many by leaving out former All Star Val Daly from their line-up for the Connacht final against Mayo at Castlebar. In one sense it makes sense that the team which has come this far with two matches against Sligo and a semi-final against Leitrim should be left intact
Yet the absence of Daly may puzzle some although the selectors obviously feel that a 20-minute blast from their most experienced player towards the end of the game might be more valuable than expecting him to last the full 70 minutes. The Galway team has a well-balanced look about it but,, in the absence of any confirmation from Mayo about their line-up, leaves a number of questions open.
What seems certain is that Declan Sweeney is definitely out of contention because of injury, while John Casey is expected to play at full forward and Ray Dempsey stands a very good chance of being included in the attack, if not from the start, then at some time during the second half.
One worrying feature of recent vintage, although not entirely new, is that team selections released to the media are being deliberately falsified in a rather pathetic bid to confuse the opposition and by extension, the people paying at the turnstiles.
The Wexford team released to the media last week and published in the official programme was never going to be the team which took the field at Croke Park for the Leinster hurling final against Offaly. The Wexford player Larry O'Gorman told Evening Herald reporter, Paddy Hickey, that a bogus team was released for to the public last Tuesday.
It appears that everybody in the Wexford camp knew that George O'Connor had no chance of playing, that Larry O'Gorman was not going to play at left corner back, that Rory McCarthy was being moved from midfield to wing forward and that Martin Storey would play in the an A N Other centre forward position (reserved for George O'Connor).
This week the Mayo selectors have picked their team, but have refused to tell the media what that team is in spite of persistent enquiries.
