John Quigley had been there before him.

One July evening 30 years ago, in the days when a player could be seen in a pub the week of a big match without anyone thinking to bat an eyelid, John Quigley, who was working in Dublin at the time, was in a Rathmines hostelry with his friend Jim Byrne when they met Con Kenealy of the Irish Independent. The trio fell to talking and Kenealy, a staunch Kilkennyman who loved his hurling as much as he loved his coursing and conviviality, was all about the following Sunday's Leinster final. How his lads were going to win their sixth provincial title on the spin. How they'd follow it up with a third successive All Ireland. How a black-and-amber takeover of the entire universe could only be a matter of months away.

The nettled Quigley, who'd lost more Leinster finals to Kilkenny than anyone had a right to, responded like a good Wexfordman. "We'll give them six in a row next Sunday, " he shot back, little knowing what would transpire.

"Is that so?" said Kenealy.

"Well, if ye beat Kilkenny, I'll give you the Sports Star of the Week award in the Independent."

Cut to 18 July at Croke Park: Wexford 2-20 Kilkenny 1-6. Quigley scored 1-3, "And I suppose I played reasonably well". Cut to the Ulster football championship in Clones: Michael Fortune of the Irish Press, a native of the Enniscorthy area, spends a highly enjoyable afternoon listening to his radio and nudging a harassed Kenealy to apprise him of every additional Wexford point. Cut to the following Friday and the announcement of the Sports Star of the Week in the Irish Independent. A man of his word, the late Con Kenealy.

The award graces Quigley's mantlepiece to this day.

Looking back from this remove, Quigley reckons that Wexford's day of liberation was a matter of when rather than if. "We always felt we had a good chance of beating Kilkenny and I reckoned that sooner or later they'd have to give in. Or else we'd have to give up."

How Wexford were still plugging away as things stood was a testament to their powers of resilience. They'd lost the previous five Leinster finals to their neighbours, not all of them as narrowly as folk memory claims. By three goals in 1971, by eight points in 1972 in a replay, by 10 points in 1973, by one point in 1974 after Phil Wilson had been sent off just before half-time, by six points in 1975. It wouldn't have taken much for Wexford to win two of those encounters. That they didn't was no fault of Quigley, whose game was predicated on taking the battle to the enemy whenever the opportunity existed and sometimes even when it didn't, and who never left the field berating himself for not giving more.

"I loved getting stuck in and the Kilkenny boys loved getting stuck into me. There wasn't a dirty Kilkenny hurler.

But by God they were all tough. And Lady Luck tends to side with great teams. But by 1976 they were an ageing team. Tired."

They were indeed. The All Ireland champions had spent the spring bogged down on an unnecessary second front, their league semi-final against Cork and league final against Clare both going to replays.

There'd been a visit to the US in between. To top it off, a round of county championship matches was held the weekend before the Leinster final. Fatigue and hubris before the fall.

On the big day, Wexford exploded from the traps and went four points up. Eddie Keher missed a couple of frees . . . the first indication that normal service was about to be suspended . . .

before nailing a penalty. A point from Chunky O'Brien soon levelled the scores. Wexford doing all the hurling, Kilkenny managing to hang in there: so far, so familiar. But approaching half-time Tony Doran engaged with a posse of defenders as only Doran could and laid off the sliotar for Quigley to beat Noel Skehan from close range.

The challengers led by 1-11 to 1-5 at the break and resumed with points from Ned Buggy (a free from inside his own half) and Mick Butler.

Then the levee broke. Doran once again did his thing, rounding Nicky Orr and palming the ball home for a goal that put Wexford 2-13 to 1-5 ahead. The rest of the match was target practice masquerading as a contest.

By the time Jimmy Rankins sounded the final whistle, the greatest Kilkenny team ever was dead on the table.

It was Kilkenny's heaviest defeat in a Leinster final since 1896. They managed only one point in the second half. They managed only one point from play all day. The black shorts and amber socks they wore were never seen again. Aside from the performance of Noel Skehan, whose brilliance between the sticks was the difference between a catastrophic defeat and a merely disastrous one, the sole bright spot for the losers was the effervescence of a young sub called Joe Hennessy. The man he replaced? His clubmate Brian Cody.

Oddly if probably understandably, there wasn't a single moment in the second half where Quigley allowed himself to breathe the air of freedom. "No, not against Kilkenny. Not until the final whistle. We hadn't beaten them since the 1970 Leinster final and of the matches in between, we probably had them beaten . . . or seemed to have them beaten . . . at some stage or other in three or four of them. Even when we went 17 points up, I was still afraid."

Wexford's subsequent fate in the All Ireland final being too familiar to require reheating here, suffice it to say that Quigley remains eternally grateful he already had his Celtic Cross, having come on as a teenage sub for Shanks Whelan against Tipperary in 1968. Naturally enough he assumed he'd be winning "three or four more All Irelands" during his career.

Instead Wexford met their Vinegar Hill three times against Cork. Then again, Quigley points out, he also lost three All Ireland under-21 finals and five county finals with Rathnure. "If I was disappointed about the matches I lost, I'd have given up years before I did."

One match Wexford didn't lose was the 2004 Leinster semi-final. Much to his father's surprise, Eoin Quigley (left) was given his championship bow at centre-forward only a couple of months after being cast adrift from the panel. In the toilets in Croke Park before throw-in, John heard people . . . Wexford people . . . wondering aloud exactly "who this Quigley lad" was.

Please let him get at least one belt of the ball, John prayed.

In the event, Eoin got much more than that. Thus another Quigley, this one admittedly no chip off the old block in stylistic terms, did his bit to stop another Kilkenny threein-a-row bid 28 years on.

Today? Quigley pere is hoping for a good game and pleased to see so many youngish faces on the team.

It's the only way to go, he says.

Present in Callan the other week to see the Kilkenny under-21s stick 17 points on Wexford, he left downhearted but not in the least surprised.

"Kilkenny are putting in the work and getting the results.

We're not putting in the work and not getting the results.

Wexford football people have worked very hard over the last 10 years and are seeing the rewards now. But hurling needs more time and effort than football. Unless we put it in, we won't get the skill level back up."

John Quigley always did.