From portents of doom to great expectations

THE INK in the obituarists’ pens dried up at about the time Séan Óg O hAilpín encountered Declan Fanning underneath the covered stand in Páirc Uí Chaoimh yesterday.

There were 41 minutes of the Cork-Tipp Munster SHC game played; seismologists can verify the timing.

The black-edged pages were ready and waiting, the career stats primed and double-checked; proclaiming the end of an era can be an intoxicating prospect, and there would have been no shortage of punters ready to call the time of death.