Seán Moran assesses the merits of the claims that surround the legendary All-Ireland final of 1956

This Sunday Wexford will try again to add to the county's one championship win over Cork. It's now 47 years since the counties met in one of the most famous All-Ireland finals in history.

That year's finals were postponed because of a polio epidemic and the hurling was played on 23rd September. It was a notable year for Cork in the wrong sense with the county losing all three senior finals - the football and camogie as well as the hurling. The county wouldn't reach another final for 10 years, a huge gap by Cork's standards.

Two years previously the sides had met in a final that drew the biggest attendance ever to watch a hurling match, 84,856, and saw Cork complete a three-in-a-row.

Had Wexford won they would probably have achieved the same three-in-a-row feat in 1956. The county's rise was the story of the decade but they didn't capture the All-Ireland until 1955, defeating Galway.

The following year's final represented the county's zenith as a power in the game and its only brace of back-to-back hurling All-Irelands. The crowd at 83,096 was only just short of the 1954 record. For Wexford the opportunity to beat hurling's top county and prove their supremacy was a huge motivation.

In what was by any standards an iconic final, two major legends were born. One concerned the match itself. Was it then the best final ever played? There were differences of opinion on the matter between two persuasive authorities. Years later Mitchel Cogley, the legendary Irish Independent sports editor and writer, said that it was "the greatest final of the century".

PD Mehigan, this paper's first GAA correspondent, writing under the pseudonym Carbery, had this to say: "I put this high on the list of finals without being quite up to half-a-dozen finals which I can recall in hurling standards. The middle game of 1931 (between Cork and Kilkenny) with the final scores 2-5 each was, to my mind, the greatest final of them all."

Central to the outcome was a save by Wexford goalkeeper Art Foley from Christy Ring. Wexford were being reeled in by Cork and with three minutes on the clock the lead was down to two points.

From the clearance Nicky Rackard added an insurance goal at the other end to copper-fasten the win. Ring ran in to shake Foley's hand after the save and the legend was born.

Debate has rumbled down the decades over the quality of the save. There is no footage of the match so no material for arbitration survives. Ring was, by common consent, about 20 yards out but the shot was straight at the Wexford goalkeeper. According to Carbery: "So fast was he (Ring) moving that he was almost on the goal-line as soon as the ball. But Art Foley was lynx-eyed and cool. He grabbed the bullet ball and cleared to safety."

In the 1980s Foley himself remembered differently.

"Well actually I blocked it with the hurl. The ball went straight up in the air. Then it was just like a camera: you're looking around to see who's around. (Josie) Hartnett and (Gerry) Murphy were coming in at full belt so I blocked it out to (Jim) Morrissey.

"Christy was full sure he had a goal and that's the whole idea of it. He came rushing in after it and when he saw the ball wasn't in the net the first thing he did was stuck out his hand and says 'You little black bastard, you're after beating us'."

Maybe the most measured assessment of the save comes from Wexford centre back Billy Rackard, although his version tallies with Carbery's (the only contemporary account) rather than Foley's.

"It was magnificent. But to rate it the save of the century is, I think, stretching the imagination. I feel for a save to remotely enter that category, it should result from the keeper stopping his most unfavoured shot and from a most unfavoured angle. This was not the case. At eye level, in a standing position, as it came at him Art grabbed the ball - a favourite shot for any keeper, especially Foley. Also Ring was being tailed and in fear of being hooked. I believe the circumstances surrounding this save are what make it so memorable."

There was one last enduring image. At the final whistle Bobby Rackard and Nick O'Donnell chaired Ring off the field after what would prove his last All-Ireland. Bobby Rackard had given a fabled display marking Ring in the 1954 final, so this was a memorable tribute. Billy Rackard recalled his late brother's most famous performance.

"But Bobby transformed his strength into skilful hurling. Ned Wheeler was big but he'd fall all over you. Bobby and Nick O'Donnell though could break your hip if they caught you side-on - and this was perfectly legal.

"In the 1954 All-Ireland when Bobby marked Christy Ring, he sized him up for a clatter and I swear he'd have shattered every bone in Ring's body but Ring was always very low to the ground and he just escaped.

"I heard later though that Ring had told someone at home: 'Bobeen Rackard,' he said (he always called him Bobeen), 'that f****r is mad.'"