The knives were well and truly out at the Tirlán board meeting last Friday. It was the first meeting to take place since the AGM where six new board members were appointed. The big casualties were John Murphy and Bill Carroll, who lost their positions as chair and vice-chair respectively.

Murphy was chair for five and a half years and presided over transformative change at the co-op. A bit like the Cork hurlers, Tirlán love to tell you how good they are despite not actually winning the All-Ireland or topping the milk league but to be fair, Tirlán is in great shape. Overall, Murphy will be proud of his achievements as chair, even if it ended on a sour note.

New chair Ger O’Brien had a score to settle after being unseated as vice chair by Bill Carroll last year.

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He got his scalp and now leads the board with two new vice-chairs, Larry Hannon and Dan Lynch plus six newbies to chaperone. He’s the first Waterford man to chair the co-op since Liam Herlihy retired in 2015 and he too is highly regarded as a solid performer. At 63, his term as chair won’t be a long one.

All eyes are now on what happens to the two Glanbia plc seats held by the co-op. Currently occupied by Murphy and Carroll, speculation is that O’Brien won’t take the plc seat and instead honour his campaign pledge to focus all of his energy on the co-op. By doing so he foregoes the €80,000 or so in director fees paid by the plc.

By all accounts, Murphy and Carroll intend to stay on and see out their terms on the co-op board, so they might yet retain their plc seats.

It’ll be an interesting one to watch with The Dealer’s money on the two new vice chairs, Hannon and Lynch to be the nominees to the plc board.