The goalkeeper surveys the bruised and darkening evening above Wexford Park and contemplates his last hours as a 26-year-old. It does not feel like July 4th. Previous birthdays arrived on chariots of day-long sunshine, pure heat, summer scents. Not this year. Thunder rolled uneasily throughout the training session and his copper hair is damp from rain.

This Gaelic field is set on the upper reaches of Billy Roche's "topsy-turvy town that rose up and tumbled down into rows and rows of gardenless houses". Wexford hurling has had some sweet nights here in the not so distant past. Someone was recalling the open training session a week before Wexford won the 1996 All-Ireland. Thousands traipsed up the winding streets just to watch, to be there.

The din around the stands was joyous. It was cloudless, the precious last of August, Liam Griffin's urgent poetry rung around the ground and from afar, light and colour flared from the beach where Stephen Spielberg was filming Saving Private Ryan. They were wildly unanticipated times in Wexford, those middle months of 1996 and faintly magical.

This time round is tempered with an ominous fatalism. Wexford are back in a Leinster final, the novel outsiders from the southeast but now, no-one is predicting another visitation of unlikely glory and, although most of Wexford will venture to Croke Park tomorrow, just a handful have stopped to observe the heroes at practice tonight. So Damien Fitzhenry has the gloomy stand to himself as he foresees an added candle. "God, yeah. A few more hours and that's me, 27." The goalkeeper's face crinkles as he laughs at himself. He is no old man. Merrily, he will vow to - heart willing - keep himself between the posts "for another five or six years at least. AT LEAST".

The Duffrey man has been a constant between the posts for Wexford since his torrid debut year in 1993 when the county, enriching its unwanted reputation for dramatic loss, came away with nothing after three league finals against Cork and a Leinster final replay against Kilkenny, the aristocrats, the know-how county.

"I suppose that set us back all right. We wanted that league, a national title and even now, people say we should have won it. And Kilkenny, well it was the way they worked that equalising point that set them apart," he remembers, pausing as if again seeing a celluloid re-run of the long, languid clearance from Liam Simpson., the threaded ball from Adrian Ronan and finally, inevitably, Eamon Morrissey's casual, lordly grace note.

"Even then, they were a great team. That move was really the winning of the next game. They're excellent hurlers, they have the goods. Teams like that don't give you a second a chance. We were caught and Kilkenny went well."

Kilkenny; that old, familiar spider's web, is spun large ahead of Wexford's path again now. Tomorrow represents as severe an assignment as a hurling keeper could imagine. Kilkenny, All-Ireland champions, are radiant with invincibility, characterised by a full-forward trinity that is bursting from the pages of worldly accomplishment towards something else. Something new. Even among his own, Fitzhenry senses it.

"You talk to people around Wexford, who would be avid hurling fans and they are kinda half wanting to say, you know, that they think Kilkenny will win it. Then the other half of them is not sure, hoping for the opposite. In a way, there is very little for us to be fearful of because we have absolutely nothing to lose, as people see it.

"Kilkenny are a team that has looked unbeatable, in fairness to them. In a class of their own. And everyone across the country is giving us no chance, in fairness, which is not really dismissive. It's just that Kilkenny has been playing so well." It must rankle, though. Not so many moons have been spent since Wexford were the kingpins, the best in the land. And yet. Nobody has said that tomorrow's Leinster final is a mis-match, nobody has been that casual about Wexford. But it is whispered.

The names Carey, Shefflin and Carter are the names that dominate this summer, the goal-getters, the untouchables. Fitzhenry nods. "They are not," he declares, "the type of forwards you'd want to face every day. The way it is, we have a full-back line with a job to do and we will have to do our living best. And the boys will be up for it because, as everyone says, they have a fearsome forward line - crazy, crazy good.

"But what do you do about it? Regardless of whom you play, they'll sneak a goal sometime. Kilkenny seem to do it every time. That is the difference. You'd be doing well to come out of there tomorrow with just two goals. That's how we'd look at it.

Fitzhenry speaks in searingly honest bursts of colour. The youngest in a family of eight brothers and sisters, he probably had to fight for broadcast space. He reckons his life as a goalkeeper was unavoidable, that it came with being the kid in the house.

"In a family of that size, when you'd be out playing in the back garden, the youngest is always stuck in goal, that's the rule. No point in saying anything about it. And it just went from there, to be honest."

Duffrey is steeped in football tradition, claiming seven out of eight championships one year, but though the youngest Fitzhenry followed his brothers in lining out with the club, he kept half an eye on hurling. Secondary school life was the crossover; at the MCJ in Bunclody, Rory Kinsella saw the future in his reflexes and his ascent through the Wexford ranks was unruffled. Now, he punts football with Duffrey and Wexford juniors.

"Played there against Meath in the junior championship last week and took a fierce shot in the hip. The Meath lads would give you nothing soft," he laughs. "I suppose there is a slight bit of unease among the hurling management at me playing but I told them from the start I would play a bit. It is both an escape from hurling and also an escape from being in goals. Because you'd get rusty being stuck between the posts the whole time."

He was never fully convinced about how permanent his own goal-line residency ought to be. His arrival in 1993 steadied an alarmingly busy gangplank left volatile by a stream of goalkeepers who had found the Wexford number one spot a trying place. Fitzhenry brought attitude and deft hands to the post. But his outfield potential was so pressing that in the league of 1995, he began filling-out a cameo as a half back.

"And I enjoyed it too," he announces, "until Joe Rabbitte gave me an awful feckin' roasting up in Limerick". With SΘamus Kavanagh, Wexford's alternative number one, having failed to come back from a bad leg injury, Fitzhenry was back in goal for the All-Ireland championship. "And I haven't stirred since."

But faith in his outfield abilities persist and even after the Rabbitte lecture, with Liam Griffin envisaging the young stopper as "a George O'Connor of years to come. I think having played outfield has made him more agile and definitely made him a better keeper. I can't see any weaknesses in his game."

Those sentiments are echoed five years on.

"Damien is of immense importance to us," says Tony Dempsey from the depths of an anorak on this drenched night. "He is talkative on the field, so alert and has made so many tremendous saves. Goalkeepers are different in that they are called upon occasionally. He has made so many fine saves in my time that it is impossible to single one out but, going back, I think the stop against Dublin in the 1996 championship, when Dublin attacked late on and Damien advanced and dispossessed the forward was vitally important."

"Suppose you'd want to be easy-going. For whenever a lad would get at you for letting one in. If you dwell on a goal, you might as well forget about it. And you probably need to be a small bit brave - not saying I'm a fierce hardy man or anything but you'd need to be on your toes. It's different to football.

"The ball can be on you in two seconds and you have to decide straightaway. If you stay, he'll probably put you and the ball into the back of the net. If you go, you might hope that some part of you - your head or arm or leg blocks the ball. And if it happens to hit your hurl, it'll look even better."

He laughs, as if amused at betraying the truth of all the great, instinctive stick-saves that preceded his. Although burningly serious about his hurling, he carries also a lightness of attitude, an inherent humour, to his game. The Wexford 'keeper is also the Wexford penalty-taker. Back in 1992, as a minor, he sent one thundering off the crossbar and thought the run back to the sanctity of his goalmouth would last forever.

"The run up-field is great, but by Jesus the return home is long if you miss the penalty. That was hard that day." But he persevered and dispatched two, against Dublin and Offaly in that shimmering year that it all falls back on when the dust settles:1996.

So what has changed since then? Damien Fitzhenry grimaces. There are voids, of course. He'd sometimes pine for Martin Storey's soft wit around the dressing room. Tom Dempsey, too. Maybe at 27 - no, store those hours - 26 there is less a sense of adventure about it now.

When Griffin went after '96, Wexford earned another precious valuable Leinster title under Rory Kinsella but then fell away. After a small season of rumours, Joachim Kelly took on a post that nobody wanted and got little thanks for it after a drubbing last summer at the hands of Offaly.

"Joachim's job was to train the team and he did that," says Fitzhenry quietly. "After that, when it comes to the game on the field, Mickey Mouse might as well be on the line. No disrespect to any manager but they can only make changes. Often, those moves work. But the hurlers still have to hurl."

Those successive whippings by an aged Offaly side, suggested that Wexford was on a retreat to nothingness. Insiders insisted that the scene was not so bleak, but people were interested in results, not forecasts.

In some ways, Wexford are back where they are in '96. Nobody thought twice about them then either. Griffin is back, roaming the field tonight, taking a few training drills, stooped in conversation with Tony Dempsey. Ticket sales for Croke Park are brisk as ever. But Kilkenny, the sheer depth of their shadow, quells the sense of adventure.

"They have all the great names," Damien Fitzhenry is saying. "Carter. Carey. Kennedy. Shefflin. The whole lot. But we have to say, listen, they are a great team, yes, but we have a chance. We have to believe. Otherwise, we might as well stay at home on Sunday."

He laughs through the stillness of Wexford Park. He will always be the youngest of the Fitzhenry's but, as these hours pass, he is pushing on as a leader of Wexford hurling, one of the last of the old gang, a keeper in the truest sense.