Anthony Maher will make his first appearance of the year for Kerry this weekend.

The Kingdom midfielder has been sidelined since last September's All-Ireland final, having undergone hip surgery in the meantime.

He trained with the rest of the Kerry squad last week during their training camp in Surrey and played the first half of Duagh's Division Five league clash with Cromane on Sunday.

All the indications are that he will line out for Kerry when they open their Munster SFC defence with a semi-final meeting with Clare at Killarney on Sunday.

James O'Donoghue, Johnny Buckley, Denis Daly and Brendan O'Sullivan will all be absent, however, with manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice confirming Maher's imminent return in The Irish Examiner:

"We are delighted with where he is at. The week before we went away, he played both evenings at training. The week we were away, he did a session a day which was the plan for him. The recovery was slow, but that was to be expected with the nature of the injury.

"From Anthony's point of view then, when you get to a certain point, you just want to be on the pitch and as his return to play date was getting closer, he was a bit further away that he thought he should be. But it came together very quickly in the end."

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