GAA/Leinster Hurling Final: Well! You knew, didn't you? Back in the spring when the skies were darkest over Wexford, you knew what was fermenting in their bellies. You knew there was a Leinster title out there with their name on it. Yup! Sure you did. Tom Humphries at Croke Park

Fair play to you, Nostradamus. For the rest of us this latest lurch in the tale of Wexford hurling was a sensation. A twist we never expected. Wexford's is a story which just refuses to end, which just refuses to settle. There are no banal passages. It's high times or heartbreak. Yesterday in chipping their 20th Leinster title from a hard but entertaining grapple with Offaly they merely added some structure to their remarkable essence.

We thought we'd said goodbye to them when Liam Griffin's team of gnarled wonders faded away in 1997. They'd so much mileage clocked, so many bad days swallowed by then, that they staggered into the pantheon and lay down on the floor.

Leinster succumbed to a new generation of black and amber excellence and we assumed we wouldn't be seeing Wexford in the big place again for maybe a decade or more. Not until it hurt to miss them and men in dressing-rooms made tearful speeches about how long it had been and how much it all meant.

They've never gone away, though. Last year against Cork we thought they'd exploited the last golden thread from the 90s. The long goodbye was over at last. This year, seeing them drawn against Kilkenny in the Leinster semi-final, we tiptoed around them. Sorry for their troubles. Dead men walking. What difference did it make if the only news from them all winter was bad news? Defections. Bickering. Sunderings. They were going over the top and into the valley of death anyway.

Yet here they are, Leinster champions. John Conran, their harried manager, with a face on him cooler than the other side of the pillow on a sultry night."We never even thought about the back door," he says. "We thought about Offaly, how we would beat them, how we would go about it . . . This is our third All-Ireland semi-final in four years and people are all writing off Wexford hurling."

Guilty. Guilty as charged. We write them off long-term. We write them off short-term. We write them off as casually as a scrap dealer writes off deceased motor cars.

Yesterday in Croke Park they weren't wonderful, they were adequate. They took the best of what Offaly had to offer and then went and beat them. It was the sort of day when you expect Wexford teams to get sucker punched, the sort of day when Offaly like to sting like bees and float like butterflies. Wexford just came and conquered.

"Experience is a great thing," said Conran. "We've been at the wrong side of losing Leinster finals for a long number of years. Offaly, in particular, have been killers for us. We were very aware of that and very focused on it. We knew exactly the threat. We weren't overconfident. We got a few breaks. Damien Fitz kept us in it."

Damien Fitz. The unassuming goalkeeper is part of the soul of this Wexford team. We thought when Liam Dunne and Brother Larry and the boys passed on that Wexford would have no soul but Fitzhenry is still there, still doing it. He's broken Offaly hearts before, most memorably in the Leinster semi-final of 1997, but yesterday was just as fine an hour. Three saves, including one from a penalty in the first half, kept Wexford on life support until Mick Jacob arrived with a goal and Paul Carley added another after the interval.

They had four points to spare in the end. And respite from it all now till the middle of August. Getting to an All-Ireland final is the next goal, was about all they'd say about the long-term future.

And why worry? The new generation have a lightness about them. John O'Connor, fresh faced and two games into a senior intercounty career, lifted the Bob O'Keeffe Cup. Two games and a big cup to carry. He was a boy just yesterday coming here to see Wexford men perish on the killing field.

"Yeah. Looking at Liam Dunne, Martin Quigley, John Conran himself, I used to follow him as a wing back, looking at them, coming up to see them. I suppose it's a bit jammy alright winning one like this. But we'll take it. I'll take it anyway."

They'll take it. We'll keep turning the pages.