It’s time Cork's kingmaker also makes way

So, the king’s tenure is dead — though long live JBM. Above all, long lives the kingmaker.

Last time there was a vacancy for the position of Cork senior hurling manager, this column claimed that of even greater significance was the appointment of who’d be Cork’s next leading senior GAA official.

Like everyone else that summer of 2011, we thought Frank Murphy’s tenure was expiring, that he was to be replaced. He’d been there since 1972, reached retirement age and had been a hugely divisive and central figure in the disputes that had plagued the county the previous decade. For all his undoubted service, times had moved on and there was an assumption that in turn he’d move on too.