Should we have seen Brian Cody’s farewell coming?

FAREWELL: Former Kilkenny manager Brian Cody. Pic: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

“Hindsight is the foresight of a gobshite” as Liam Sheedy recently mentioned on Anthony Daly’s Irish Examiner hurling podcast – but were there tell-tale signs that this was going to be Brian Cody’s last season in charge of Kilkenny?

Not that the sad and monumental news of his departure should put his terse exchanges with Henry Shefflin in Salthill and Croke Park this summer in a different light but if he knew at that stage he was going, was there angry regret his greatest disciple wouldn’t be the man to take over his church having have been ordained by him?