Dónal Óg Cusack's All-Ireland Hurling final preview

Sunday should be a cliffhanger end to the year.

A year when the game never failed to deliver again but we did see some of the quality impacted by the rushed calendar that must be revisited.

Looking back, who will forget Westmeath getting a draw against Wexford, Tony Kelly's line ball at the death moment of a pulsating Munster final or Cian Lynch pointing while on his knees?

What about Luke Shefflin truly realising who his father is during the handshake saga, the magic of Gearóid Hegarty's goal against Clare, Galway's last minute free in Salthill to deny the Cats or the Tipp minors breaking young Faithful hearts with that finishing score in Nowlan Park?

On the other hand, so many teams nosedived. Waterford promised to reach the stars but gravity beat them again, the pilots of Cork and Dublin are gone from their cockpits and the flightless members of the Tipperary county board carelessly pressed the ejector button on their own man yesterday.

The difference is that being good and delivering a performance aren't the same thing. We can have our science, stats and biomechanics but the art of getting a performance out of a team again and again often defies science.

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That's what makes Sunday so full of promise. No two men have been better this hurling century at extracting performances than Brian Cody and John Kiely have been. They don't send out faint-hearts and they don't accept quitting.

Ther