The former Cork goalkeeper, considered one of the best players of any generation, spoke to Off The Ball's Diarmuid Lyng earlier this evening and said he wants to spread the message to the worldwide community that Ireland is proud of hurling and can offer it to the globe.

Success in the any county, particularly the smaller counties is important to the game and Cusack believes that with success comes pride in one’s locality and pride in our national game.

“I think it’s so important to celebrate that. Hurling is part of who we are in Ireland and we should always try and expose it to the world and take it to the world. It’s something we should always be proud of, it’s indigenous. It came from the people. I often describe it as our song, our verse, it’s our war as well . It’s something for us to be so proud of and we should be proud of what we see with our intercounty players week after week.”

The two time All-Star recipient has commended the GAA on keeping the local sense of community prevalent within our games but says that sense should not be used to stop the spread of our indigenous games.

“I think over the last couple of year’s, and it’s all credit to the GAA. The GAA still kept it’s strength through it’s sense of community. You have a person coming out here on Sunday week and they are playing in a cauldron, it’s going to be shown all over the world but in the heart and soul of these players they carry the village or the town of their people and that’s the beauty of the association and the beauty of the game.”

Cusack continued,

“But that is no reason why we shouldn’t take it to the world and be proud of our game and what we can produce and try and take the game to foreign fields and see hoe those fields would react to it.”

When quizzed on how he believes his native Cork side will fare in next week's eagerly anticipated All-Ireland Hurling final the recently retired goalkeeper was keeping any predictions to himself but he did admit that despite a rocky league campaign for both sides, a real feast of hurling should be served up on the day.

“it’s a results business so when Cork were relegated people who were following Cork were obviously going to be disappointed with that but since then the performances have gotten better and better and I think to get to the final they have played some really good hurling, especially in the semi final. It was a really nice brand of fast paced, open, skills focused game. No different to the way that Clare are.”

you can listen to the full interview here.