Brilliant forward Patrick Horgan will captain the Cork hurlers next season

PATRICK HORGAN is the new captain of the Cork senior hurling team.

The recently-selected All-Star takes over from Seamus Harnedy who was in that role for the past two years.

Horgan, one of the country’s top forwards, will be a hugely popular choice on Leeside after being picked by the new management team led by Kieran Kingston.

The Glen Rovers native previously captained the Rebels in 2012, when Jimmy Barry-Murphy was at the helm. He had been vice-captain but assumed the mantle for the championship when Donal Óg Cusack got injured in the league semi-final.

Harnedy was preceded as Cork captain by Stephen McDonnell and Anthony Nash while Pa Cronin was the pick in 2013-‘14.

Cronin, McDonnell, and Harnedy all lifted Munster silverware, but the All-Ireland crown hasn’t been raised aloft by a Leesider since Seán Óg Ó hAilpín in 2005.

Ben O’Connor was the man who held the Liam McCarthy Cup on the steps of the Hogan Stand a year earlier, while Mark Landers and Tomás Mulcahy were All-Ireland winning Cork captains at either end of the 1990s.

Cork face a hectic schedule over the coming weeks and months, with at least two games in the Munster League against Kerry and Waterford, and at least five games in the National Hurling League.

They will be away in three of those games — against Waterford, Westmeath, and Galway — and at home to Tipperary and Limerick.

The players will resume training on December 1.

The panel will be fluid in the first few months of the campaign, especially with a host of the young guns involved in Fitzgibbon Cup hurling.

The likes of Brian Turnbull and Tommy O’Connell will be looked at in the wake of their underage efforts this year, and Imokilly full-back Colm Barry, who hurls at club level with Castlelyons, is also set to be given an opportunity.

Kingston and his selectors will also hope that Barry’s club-mate Colm Spillane is fit and firing in the defence after missing out last summer.