Michael Rice expects next Sunday's All-Ireland SHC final to go to the wire.

The Carrickshock clubman will be a spectator at Croke Park for the big showdown between Kilkenny and Tipperary after rupturing his cruciate ligament on the eve of the Cats' Leinster SHC opener against Offaly in June.

"It's incredibly hard (to predict). It's pretty much 50/50," he said in Croke Park last week.

"We'll have to improve again. They were very good here (against Cork). We're going to have to make sure our hurling is up to that level. Our day against Limerick you'd describe it as a dirty day in terms of weather and we really had to grind it out.

"Going back to the quarter-finals you'd have thought they'd be close matches but it just hasn't materialised for whatever reason, which makes the final so hard to call."

In contrast to two years ago when he missed the drawn and replayed All-Ireland finals against Galway after suffering a badly broken hand following a controversial challenge from Tipp's Padraic Maher in the semi-final, Rice has had plenty of time to get his head around the fact that he won't feature in Sunday's decider.

"To miss the final two years ago was probably worse because that was so close," he continued.

"You realise there's zero hope this time because obviously Henry and Tenno (John Tennyson) tried it before and that didn't work out. They've gone and been the crash-test dummies on that so I knew my year was over.

"Two years ago I knew I was in bother because I just couldn't physically do it, it was so close. This year it happened a long way from the big match but as the matches got bigger they've been harder to watch."

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