'The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses . . . behind the lines, in the gym, out there on the road . . . long before I dance under those lights' Muhammad Ali

MINUTES after John Allen returned from the most devastated dressing room Croke Park has housed this year, Marty Morrissey visited the winning one to announce and interview the Man of the Match. Never before had Morrissey seen a dressing room as enlivened as Cork's upon hearing Donal Og Cusack had been recognised as the outstanding player in their epic clash with Waterford. In a room full of leaders and heroes, it was clear who was the Rebels' Rebel.

In the first half, Ken McGrath launched a high ball into the Cork square which Dan Shanahan tried to pull on and Diarmuid O'Sullivan went to bat. Both missed but both were practically on top of Cusack when the wet ball skidded in front of him. He had only a millisecond to see that ball, let alone touch it.

Cusack caught it below his knee and danced out with it.

"People, " thought Brian Corcoran, "have no idea of how hard he's practised that."

The week before that semifinal, Cusack and his goalkeeping coach Ger Cunningham had his backup, Anthony Nash, raining balls from 40 yards on top of the square where his other understudy, Martin Coleman, would swipe at it to try to put Cusack off. Then Nash would pump in a ball, and as it was landing, Cunningham would throw up another six sliotars in front of Cusack, and still Cusack would focus on and claim the first, dropping ball.

It was the same with McGrath's last free. A few years ago, it would have been a point. In the closing minutes of Cork's first-round defeat to Limerick in 2001, Barry Foley sliced a lineball inches over Cusack's crossbar. In the opening seconds of the 2003 All Ireland final a Tommy Walsh shot scraped over the bar, unchallenged by Cusack. "He had a chance to block that ball going over, " says Cunningham, "but he didn't have the nerve to do it.

He hadn't practised it because every goalkeeper has been taught that if a ball is going over the bar, don't try to bring it down, it's too risky.

But when there's only a puck of a ball between winning and losing, it ate at Donal Og."

After Walsh's point, Cusack felt it was time to confront John Sheedy Syndrome. Any ball two foot over the crossbar could still be his if he knocked it to safety and to the side, or if he killed it dead and brought it down. In last year's All Ireland final he stopped a previously certain point. And twice in this year's league against Waterford.

And against Clare in Thurles.

And, as McGrath would cruelly learn, against Waterford in Croke Park.

Above Cusack's office desk in De Puy Johnson and Johnson in Ringaskiddy, that quotation of Muhammad Ali's is pinned to the partitioned wall. It is more than an inspiration to Cusack, it is his creed.

In the week leading up to Waterford, Corcoran looked over to see Cusack swinging at balls above his crossbar and swiping them to the wing, where days later Corcoran would find himself in those frantic closing seconds.

There was nothing random or fortunate about Cork's win.

It might have happened in front of 60,000 but it was won far away from those witnessCusack might now be revered by the Cork public but only three years ago he was a figure of ridicule, at times, even hate. In Christy O'Connor's brilliant 'Last Man Standing', Cusack recalled how the night after Cork beat Wexford in the 2003 All Ireland semi-final replay, he ordered a taxi. Talk turned to that day's other semifinal between Kilkenny and Tipperary and Brendan Cummins' display. The driver, oblivious to the identity of his customer, declared if Cork had a keeper half as good as Cummins they wouldn't have needed a replay to dispose of Wexford. Cusack let him rant for another 20 minutes about that "f***n' Cusack". Then as they got to Cloyne, he hopped out, spotted a friend across the road and asked him, "What's my name?". When the bemused friend answered, Cusack turned to the driver.

That's right, he was the same "f****n' Cusack".

Others had no trouble telling him to his face what they thought. That Christmas he was rounded outside a Cork city nightclub by seven punters. "You're f***n' useless, Cusack!" they roared. "You bollocks, you cost us the All Ireland!"

Cusack wasn't bothered by the rants of the mob, but he knew his family was. At the do-or-die qualifier against Tipperary in 2004 his sister Treasa cried at the vitriol from the terraces. Her distress was noticed, the trigger for the abuse to grow louder and worse. His mother no longer goes to games. That's the price of being related to that "f***n' Cusack".

"The criticism he'd have got back then only made him stronger, " contends Cunningham. "He was very strong anyway in his belief that he was the best keeper in Cork, and that every keeper goes through a period in his career where he questions himself."

Mark Landers could see what was happening. One of the reasons some of the public ridiculed him was the same reason why his teammates loved him. "The general public might not have believed in Donal Og, " says Landers, "and a good bit of that would have been because of the strike."

All the players might have acted and believed in the strike but, as Cunningham once put it, "Ogie was the guy at the gear-stick."

Cusack kept a diary in which every meeting, debate and phone call in that period was noted. Cusack's view was that every player had to be in this, every player had to be kept informed. That was once it had started. It was not how it had started.

"Probably the defining moment in the whole thing was when Donal Og went on the radio and said one man [Frank Murphy] was running the show in Cork, " says Landers. "I didn't know he was going on the radio and I couldn't have anticipated what was to happen after he did. But obviously Donal Og had a vision of what would."

Cusack's role in the strike and later in the GPA would call his motives and character into question but such aspersions were based on ignorance and prejudice. "There isn't a more dedicated or better GAA man in Ireland, " contends Cusack's fellow clubman, Tomas O'Brien. "He's going to be great for the GAA in years to come. He'll do anything he can to improve it."

O'Brien has seen how at first hand. In 2003, 2004 and 2005 Cusack coached the Cloyne senior team, guiding them to the first two senior county finals in their history. This year he took the under-21s and coaches the under-12s. He's held meetings and clinics with club coaches and officers, so that there'll be a consistent, systematic Cloyne way.

Yet for as much time and pride he's taken in being GPA chairman, Cloyne coach and GAA man, Donal Og Cusack has been driven this past three years to be something else.

"Hurling has always been a way of life with me. It was never my ambition to play the game for the sake of winning All Ireland medals or breaking records. It was to perfect the art as well as possible."

Christy Ring, brother of Donal Og Cusack's great grandfather When Tomas O'Brien asked Cusack to become Cloyne coach at the start of 2003, Cusack initially declined.

"First, " he said, "I want to become the best goalkeeper in Ireland."

It was a goal Cusack had just written into his diary but because he'd fallen well short of it, he had to re-state it at the start of 2004.

"In '03, " says Christy O'Connor, an All Ireland winner with St Joseph's DooraBarefield and a goalkeeping coach himself, "there were shots that the likes of Cummins, [Davy] Fitzgerald and [Damien] Fitzhenry were getting to that Cusack wasn't."

The following summer Cusack won his All Ireland but it was in a workout the pair of them had in Cloyne that October before they each played in a county final that summed up Cusack's makeup and development. "We did this drill, " recalls O'Connor, "where I was absolutely planting balls at him and he was stopping every one of them.

After it was over, he got up and said to me, 'And they think I can't make stops like Cummins and Fitzy.'" O'Connor realised the same day how much perfectionism as well as pride governed Cusack.

"We were doing this warm-up drill where he was putting every ball into my hand but because there was a blazing sun behind my back, I was putting every ball down by his feet.

After about three or four balls Donal stopped.

'Hey, ' he said, 'what the hell are you at? Every ball has to go to hand.' I mentioned the sun and he said 'Forget about it. To hand.'" There could have been a blazing sun in the county final. And every ball should be looking for a teammate's hand.

There isn't a better keeper in Ireland now. All these years later, Davy Fitzgerald is still stopping bullets but still doesn't understand how psychic energy works. Before the 2004 All Ireland final, Cusack suggested Cork walk onto the pitch. When Galway scored their goal in last year's final, he took 33 seconds to puck the ball back out. When Clare went six points up in the All Ireland semi-final, Tony Carmody was struck by Cusack's composure. "He came out of goals and gave them some boost. He was just saying, 'Come on, lads, next ball. Concentrate on the next ball. Hurl away.'" Could you imagine Davy doing or saying any of that?

"There'd still people out there who would like to see Donal Og fail because of the GPA, " says Mark Landers.

"But when the history books are written, he'll go down as the real reason why Cork contested four All Ireland finals and four Munster finals on the trot and put pride back in the jersey. That's the man's achievement. It hasn't been about winning championships because championships are just a byproduct of performance. What that man has done and has got Cork to do is perform."

He has gone to extraordinary lengths to do so. Thirty years after Billy Morgan revolutionised how a footballer should use possession, another Cork goalkeeper revolutionised how a hurler should, even if it flew in the face of traditional, direct Cork hurling. A few months after Cork had won the 2004 All Ireland, himself and John Gardiner were out in a park on the team holiday in New Zealand when they spotted a local playing with a Crazy Catch net. Cusack ordered one to be shipped for Cloyne and this past week would have had belted balls against both its 'sane' and more unpredictable 'insane' side to hone his reflexes.

This past winter he came across a glove on the internet that improves his grip in the rain. He'll wear it today. He'll also wear a pair of Nike Maxsight red and amber tinted contact lenses. Last year Major League baseball players, including Ken Griffey Junior, started to use them and noticed how they could see the ball with greater clarity and how the lenses reduced sun glare. Another testimonial appealed to Cusack.

"They make you look kind of evil, " Daniel Graves, the Cincinnati Red closer said.

"Opponents might look at you like you're possessed."

Cusack's possessed. He wakes at six each morning to be in De Puy's gym for seven.

Last year as Cloyne coach he locked the gates of the club pitch at 12 o'clock, the time training was set to start. Three players showed up at a minute past. The gate stayed closed.

If one story sums Cusack up though it is the lead-up to last year's county quarter-final.

There was a game on before it, so O'Brien, as team manager, suggested the team warm up in Ballinure, three miles away. Cusack wasn't convinced, so the pair of them hopped into a car and drove to Ballinure, and then to Pairc Ui Chaoimh, timing the journey and picking the team en route.

Afterwards Cusack accepted O'Brien's plan had merit but then he made a phone call.

The same day Barry Foley scored that sideline ball in Pairc Ui Chaoimh to knock Cork out of the 2001 championship, the Cork team had been left waiting at Pairc Ui Rinn for a Garda escort that never came. Instead, players had to hop into their cars and try to pave their way through a river of people. By the time they arrived, Cusack had to urinate on a damp towel in the old bowl's gym because the tunnel and toilets were jammed with punters.

Four years later on a Saturday evening, 3,000 people watched Cloyne beat St Finbarr's. There'd been 40,000 more people at Cork-Limerick. But Cloyne had their Garda escort in Ballinure.

That game wasn't being lost out on that road, well before they danced out into that light.