Down's football manager, Pete McGrath, put the record straight yesterday concerning the controversy arising from the exclusion of prolific goal scorers Peter Withnell and Ciarain McCabe for Sunday's Ulster senior football championship preliminary round tie with Tyrone in Omagh.

"Nobody was dropped from the panel," insisted McGrath.

The consensus among followers of McGrath's team is that the manager and his selectors have put the prospects of the team at risk by not including match winning potential in their plans.

"They weren't dropped," repeated the Down manager, "nobody has been dropped from the panel. They took themselves out of the thing.

"Ciarain was injured in a club game about three weeks ago and he came to training one night to report the injury and that was the end of him. He never came back for treatment. We have a physio present at every training session.

"In Peter Withnell's case, the challenge matches indicated that he was not assured of a first team place. He was unhappy seemingly that he wasn't going to nail down a place for Sunday and decided as a result of that to leave.

"As I see it, both players decided that they were not going to be in the starting line up and as a result of that were not prepared to stay in the panel. If someone takes that decision there is not a thing I can do about it."

McGrath added: "Peter talked to me about it. I put the situation to him that we felt his performances in the challenges were not up to scratch. I told him, the best thing you can do Peter is stay with us, fight your corner. I told him, you certainly will not get on to the team by talking about how good you are or by leaving. I encouraged him to stay, but he didn't take my advice." McGrath is pleased to have James McCartan to lead the attack. "It has been a problem area for us since Greg (Blaney) retired. James hasn't played in the position to any great extent before but he is very adaptable. We'll just have to see the way it goes on Sunday."

McGrath, his selectors and players have been examining how they lost the league quarter-final to Monaghan after leading by seven points with 12 minutes remaining. "When we sat down to talk about it we realised how poorly we in fact played that day," said McGrath.

What has life been like for his team after that defeat? "We have picked up well. We won the McKenna Cup, beating Tyrone in a replay, and we beat Armagh in the final. We also beat Meath and Leitrim in challenge matches. OK, challenge matches are only challenge matches, but they do indicate something," he said.

"The fact that the team was playing reasonably well has been encouraging."

Down have got their fair share of early crunch matches in recent years. How does he feel about that?

"Yes, every year we seem to be pitted against big teams in preliminary or first round matches, but that's just the nature of things. You can complain about it or moan about it, but it's the reality of things, you just have to cope with it."

McGrath has good cause to believe that his team is better prepared this year for another confrontation with Tyrone. "Compared with last year we are enjoying a free run, a clean bill of health. We had to go into last year's game badly depleted."

Injuries sustained before last year's match in Newry devastated Down's defensive qualities. Finbar Caulfield, Brian Burns and Michael Magill had to sit out the game and Paul Higgins had emigrated.

All four are now included to make life that bit more difficult for a Tyrone attack sadly denied the services of the injured Peter Canavan.

Dublin's Keith Galvin will not be available for the Leinster championship match with Kildare on June 7th. He broke his leg in a club game on Wednesday night, between his club, St Sylvester's and Ballymun Kickhams.