DICK WHITNEY was the Tommy Dorsey of Wexford in the 1950s. Tommy Dorsey, for the benefit of younger readers, was a famous American bandleader; Dick Whitney was his Slaneyside equivalent, a famous Wexford bandleader who, were he around today and playing his type of music, would be the coolest dude in town. Half a century ago, Dick reworked the words of 'Davy Crockett', a popular song of the time, to sing the praises of Nicky Rackard.

When visitors called to your house in those days, you were often required to perform your party piece. In such circumstances, boys usually become shy and hid behind their hands or their siblings. Not this particular boy. Not me. No way. Being a Wexford child of the 1950s, I couldn't wait to belt out some Dick Whitney. 'Nick-ee, Nicky Rackard, the man who knows no fear/Nick-ee, Nicky Rackard, king of the close-in free.'

Nicky Rackard. The man who knew no fear. The king of the close-in free. The alpha and omega of Wexford hurling. A sportsman to his fingertips, so much so that, remarkably, he was never booked.

Full-forward on the Team of the Century.

How he didn't make the Team of the Millennium still astonishes and outrages me.

Fifty years on from one of the most storied All Ireland finals ever, Rackard has been brought to life again in Tom Williams's splendid new book, Cuchulainn's Son: the story of Nickey Rackard, which was launched last Wednesday. If you're a sports person, buy this book. If you're interested in the rise and fall of the human spirit, body and soul, buy this book. That's how good it is.

I never saw Rackard at the height of his career, only towards the end of it. Yet, strangely, I don't really feel I missed out, for I heardRackard at the height of his career.

Although television has long since become the supreme medium, there was a magical quality about radio in the Ireland of the 1950s. Listening to Micheal O Hehir wasn't merely the next best thing to being at a match, it was in some ways even better than being there. Your imagination was fired, your awareness was heightened, your powers of visualisation ran free. It's interesting that visualisation is now such a powerful tool in sports psychology.

Rackard was impossibly glamorous. Where some players of the 1950s were all cloth caps and wellingtons, he invariably seemed to look immaculate. I often thought how comfortably he would have fitted alongside the likes of Charlie Hurley of Sunderland and Pat Saward of Aston Villa on the cards that came with boxes of sweet cigarettes. While that famous Wexford team contained many fine performers, it had one superstar.

We all wanted to be Nicky Rackard. I can remember boys going off in a huff and refusing to play because, "I said I was Nicky first!" Micheal O Hehir coined the phrase "a Rackard special" as a result of Nicky's piledriving 21-yard frees. Nicky's brother Billy had a very fine men's clothes shop in Wexford town. His marketing slogan read, "Let your next suit be a Rackard special."

Up to the mid-1950s, hurling boasted two iconic figures, Christy Ring and Mick Mackey. Then a third came along. The feats of Ring and Mackey have been well documented, so here's a statistic for you.

Rackard scored a staggering 60 goals in his championship career, a tally both unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Sixty goals from 35 appearances, that is, and this with a county who hadn't been mapped in hurling terms between 1910 and the early 1950s.

Ring scored 33 from 65. With Cork.

How apt it was that the 1956 All Ireland final pitted the two of them against one another. Cork versus Wexford. Ring versus Rackard. Wexford were the defending champions but, having lost to Cork in 1954, needed to beat them in order to inherit the mantle of true greatness. Where posterity was concerned, their reputation would stand or fall on the outcome in 1956.

A crowd of 83,096 flooded into Croke Park to see what would transpire, a figure only marginally down on the record attendance of 84,856 that had watched the same counties in 1954. The game wasn't decided until the closing stages. Wexford led by two points with three minutes remaining, after leading by six points for most of the second half. Then Ring latched onto a monstrous clearance from Paddy Philpott, sidestepped the Wexford defence . . . no mean feat, given that the backline contained two of the defenders of the century in Nick O'Donnell and Bobby Rackard . . .and unleashed a shot at goal.

Opinions vary to this day over exactly how hard the shot was and how fast it travelled. One school of thought has it that Ring was off balance as he pulled the trigger, with the result that most of the power was taken out of the shot. My friend Ned Wheeler, on the other hand, insists that the shot was a bullet but was placed very close to Art Foley on the goal-line. In Cuchulainn's Son, Tom Williams argues that it was "a bread and butter save for a competent keeper". Whatever the truth of the matter, Foley made the most famous save in the history of hurling and the most important save ever by a Wexford goalie.

The excitement wasn't over yet. Foley cleared the ball. It immediately came back in. He cleared it again and this time it found its way down the far end of the field where Nicky Rackard won possession.

Ring had had his chance. Now it was Rackard's turn. As he'd done so often in the past, Nicky uncorked one of his Rackard specials. The ball flew into the net. Cork were beaten. Wexford were champions, the undisputed greatest team in the land.

Immortality was theirs.

Strangely, that may not have been either Rackard's or Wexford's finest hour in 1956.

They met Tipperary in the National League final and trailed by all of 15 points, 2-10 to 0-1, midway through. Ned Wheeler has often said that the best, most rousing speech he's ever heard in his life was the one given by Rackard in the dressing room at half-time. He demanded that the players deliver. They did. The hair still stands up on the back of my neck as I recall some more lines from Dick Whitney's song.

'Two points in the difference, two minutes to go/Dixon got a goal that staggered the foe/We were in front and the seal was set/When Nicky lashed another to the back of the net/Nicky, Nicky Rackard, the man who knows no fear.' Cue an entire family and the neighbours' children leaping around the radio in the kitchen.

The man's legacy endures. It can be seen in the institution that is the Rackard League for national schools. It can even be seen, perhaps, when Kevin Doyle, a chap from the GAA heartland of Adamstown and a son of the famous camogie-playing Kehoes of Cloughbawn, bangs in a goal for Reading or Ireland. Above all it can be seen from the commitment of the members of the 1996 All Ireland-winning team, the direct heirs of Rackard, to the current crop of young hurlers in Wexford and in the appointment of George O'Connor as the county's director of hurling.

Before he wrote this book, Tom Williams wrote a wonderful song, also called 'Cuchulainn's Son', about Rackard. The song closes with a line about an ash tree toppling and scattering seeds at random.

May the seeds endure. May Nicky Rackard's influence never die. Up Wexford!

'Cuchulainn's Son: the story of Nickey Rackard' is written by Tom Williams and published by Blackwater Press, price /20