All-Ireland SHC Semi-final: Fifty years ago, Cork and Wexford met in the All-Ireland hurling final. It was the pivotal match during a period when the power-base would shift across the south of the country. Cork were chasing their 19th All-Ireland title, and a third successive championship, while the Wexford team were hoping to decorate the cup for the first time since 1910 and, more pertinently, to atone for the September loss of three years earlier when they managed 3-9 against Tipperary but leaked an incredible 7-7.

In 1954, the defence was stingier, conceding just 1-9, but things also dried up at the other end. Wexford's final total of 1-6 was a shattering disappointment and flew in the face of all logic as the forwards had amassed a whopping 25-33 in the games leading up to the final. The game itself hinged on a goal by Johnny Clifford that secured a record eighth All-Ireland medal for the captain that afternoon, Christy Ring.

"I partly blamed myself for that goal," recalled Billy Rackard earlier this week.

"For most of that match I was marking Paddy Barry, Lord rest him, and he wasn't doing much to cause me trouble. Towards the end of that game, Tough Barry (Jim Barry, the Cork trainer) noticed that and he switched Clifford over to me. Well, Johnny went off on one of his rambles and I did not cover back and he took his chance."

Although the game was celebrated as an exhibition of quality defending, it was not fated to go Wexford's way. Crucially, they lost their titanic full back Nick O'Donnell to a collarbone injury that he seemed to incur when stepping into the path of one of Ring's devastatingly powerful strikes on goal. That shot did fly off O'Donnell's frame but did not break any bones.

As he told Val Dorgan in his book on Ring, "No ball would do that. I faced up to Ring as he came in, but Ring was able to hit the ball and protect himself at the same time. The ball did hit my shoulder but my collarbone was broken in the clash of bodies".

With the unfortunate O'Donnell gone for most of the second half, Wexford were forced into wholesale defensive changes that were reviewed in a dim light. Bobby Rackard, playing a stormer at centre-half back, was moved back to fill the vacancy left by O'Donnell, and Ned Wheeler played centre back. It was Ring who supplied the assist for Clifford's goal, inviting his team-mate to run on to a through ball he clipped towards the Wexford end line. Clifford managed to squeeze the ball past Art Foley from an unfavourable angle.

"I was marking Christy that day," recalls Jim English. "We went into that game with no preconceptions or fears about Cork. They were just another team to us. But being a young lad then, playing on Ring was an experience and I would say he was one of the best in that game. He said very little although I became friends with him afterwards."

Ring was reported to have been unusually gushing in his praise for the style and deportment of the beaten team that day and was particularly taken with Bobby Rackard, who had been magnificent for the losers. The third brother in the Rackard hurling dynasty was no stranger to the Cork legend. In the years before he ascended to the Wexford senior panel, Billy remembers his brother lining out against Ring in a league game circa 1949-50.

"There had been a lot of talk about this Bobby Rackard and suddenly there he was," says Billy. Bobby was lean and tall - "a Gary Cooper-type" as Billy puts it - and he towered over the smaller and stockier Ring and did not give him much opportunity to shine that day. But the historic dimension to the 1954 final meant the day belonged to Ring and he was perhaps touched by the magnanimity of the Wexford players.

"That attitude would have been typical of our team," English reckons. "We were a big side - I would have been one of the smaller ones - but we hurled cleanly and whatever happened in a game we took it and there were no complaints."

It created a lasting affection between the two teams - although one that rarely strayed beyond the field. The two teams travelled to New York in subsequent years and although Billy Rackard remembers some polite socialising, the atmosphere remained formal.

"GAA fellas were not particularly social animals. We did not know each other terribly well. A lot of us were shy lads in a way."

Wexford absorbed the lessons of that 1954 loss and returned a year later to beat Galway in the All-Ireland final. When Cork reappeared in 1956, Wexford were primed.

"What happened in 1954 helped us, of course it did. We had tightened up as a team by then and responded to the big occasion."

Any luck that was going strayed towards Wexford. The game is chiefly remembered for Foley's save from Ring's shot with three minutes remaining when the defending champions were two points up. The technical merits of Foley's stop - originally considered to be miraculous - have undergone countless revisions but suffice to say, the keeper did what he had to do at the immortal moment. Billy Rackard's memory of the game is coloured by an encounter he had with Ring. As a tall team, a number of the Wexford defenders were adept at plucking the dropping ball out of the air.

Rackard had caught a series of balls that day, stemming the breaks that sharp and intelligent players like Ring thrived on. Tired of seeing the Wexford player secure yet another ball, he ran over incandescent.

"He said to me, 'tis not hurling at all, it should be disallowed. At the time it looked incredibly dangerous with a hand going up among a crowd of hurlers. But it wasn't because you were in among a cluster of players and there was no speed in the trajectory of a hurl that might swing. The theory used to be that you paid more attention to the man than the ball. We used a complete role reversal - we wanted to get out in front of the man. The catch followed. We pioneered that - O'Donnell and Bobby and players like that - but Christy felt it wasn't really part of the game."

Foley's stop denied Ring a ninth All-Ireland medal (John Doyle of Tipperary matched his haul of eight in 1965) as Nicky Rackard fired home a goal that put the game beyond doubt moments later.

"Beating Cork was the icing on the cake," remembers English - the captain that day - with some satisfaction.

The thrills of the game were commemorated by the unforgettable sight of Bobby Rackard and Nick O'Donnell chairing the defeated Ring on their shoulders. Although an unusually flamboyant gesture for GAA men, it struck a chord with the crowd.

"I have a vague memory of seeing it happen," says Billy. "It was a completely spontaneous thing but it was only about a week afterwards that I began to consider what it meant. I suppose after many games Christy was more accustomed to receiving insults from other players."

English believes the warmth between the counties may have been partly produced by the enjoyment Cork took from meeting a new team. After the endless and often personal wars of attrition against Tipperary and Kilkenny, meeting the purple and gold jerseys of Wexford must have been a liberating experience. The Wexford team of the 1950s seemed to come from nowhere - "a genetic surge", as Billy Rackard puts it - and brought record crowds to those finals. Although they might have won more than two All-Irelands in that decade, Wexford commanded a broad appeal because of their style and élan: they reminded their public that chivalry had a place in sport.

After the incomparable high of 1956, the team began to break up: Nicky and Bobby Rackard quit in 1957. Billy and English won another All-Ireland medal in 1960 with a convincing win over Tipperary. Two years later, Billy captained his county when the same teams contested the final, famously landing a 70-metre free with one hand, having had his hand badly broken in the opening minutes.

"I came for attention but our doctor wouldn't even look at the hand. There was nothing for it but to play on. I was in plaster for eight months afterwards."

He hurled on for a couple of seasons but after 15 years at the top, he says he was glad to be out of the game when he left. English also made his exit in the mid 1960s. When Cork made it to their next All-Ireland final, beating Kilkenny in 1966 for their lone success in that decade, Ring's day was also done. Wexford won another All-Ireland in 1968 and twice got caught in the rich Barry-Murphy era, losing the 1976 and '77 finals to Cork, who completed a three-in-a-row in 1978, with Ring back in Croke Park as a selector. In March the next year, Ring, for over two decades the life force of Cork hurling, died suddenly.

The Wexford team of the 1950s was loved by its public long after the hurlers stopped playing. They remained a close team and continued to meet regularly, although as Billy Rackard quipped blackly, "now it is mostly at one another's funerals."

Billy will travel to Croke Park for tomorrow's game against the famous red shirts of his youth. Asked how he rated Wexford's chances, he said: "As long as Damien Fitzhenry is in the goal, there is always a chance. That lad is a terrific goalkeeper, maybe the best the game has ever seen. If we had him, we would have won two more All-Irelands then, I am convinced of that."

English will also be in the stadium. He reckons that the fearlessness with which Wexford hurled against hurling's Holy Trinity has carried through to today's generation. "I remember one Saturday driving a flock of sheep along the road in Carlow and a man I met asked how I thought we would go against Tipperary the next afternoon. I said it was 50-50. Later, I heard he said to a friend of mine: 'that man English is mad - he thinks Wexford have a 50-50 chance against Tipperary'.

"But that was how we went into all those games against Tipperary or Kilkenny or Cork. We believed we could win." Half a century on that much remains the same.