Cusack: Why it means so much
By way of whetting his appetite, he would first view a re-run of the 2003 final in which Cork lost to their great rivals. Seeing it on tape for the first time, re-living the bad memories of the game, would be the ideal build-up to sitting back and watching the real thing.
Cusack first came on the senior panel in 1996 and took over from Ger Cunningham at the beginning of the 1999 campaign. Listening to him talk, it is apparent how obsessed he is about playing for the county, how utterly serious he is about his role in his team and how much it pains him to lose. For instance, he refers to the 2000 All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Offaly as "just a terrible thing": "we had won a great Munster championship against Tipperary. They were the last team over those two years we wanted to beat, because we had beaten all of the other big guns. Every game that this bunch of Cork players play even if it's only a game of marbles they want to win."
