A modest gathering of people were on the premises of the Curracloe Tavern in county Wexford. There was nothing unusual about the clientele. Some watched the European Cup final between Real Madrid and Juventus and swapped aimless patter in its aftermath but not everybody was interested.

Then a man stepped forward solemnly and changed television channels. Lights were turned down and everyone assembled around the screen to watch Rebellion, the RTE programme about 1798.

Whereas the relevance of the subject matter was nowhere more obvious than in Wexford, the sight of a pub falling quiet to watch the retracing of those doomed events of 200 years ago was strange and even affecting.

Tomorrow at Croke Park, Wexford play Offaly in the Guinness Leinster hurling championship semi-final. Talk of '98 has been a constant backdrop this year in Wexford and has also assumed an importance, however intangible, for the hurling team.

Appropriately, this year's captain is Oulart man Martin Storey, who captained the team which won the All-Ireland two years ago. Oulart Hill was the only military success of the Wexford rebellion.

"It (talk of '98) wouldn't have an impact on your style of play," he says, "but everywhere you go, people remind you of it being a special year. This is the year to do it. Look at the club championship this year. It will be the most hotly contested in years.

"I would be as caught up in it as anyone - being from Oulart. I was brought up here and shown the place where they fought. My mother's family was named Murphy and '98 always had an importance. You look at some places with no history and what it ('98) means to me is that you know where you're from, you have a sense of who you are and what you are - in a hurling sense, that you fight for your own place.

"We had our own march with about 6,000 people, 1,500 pikemen and the American ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith. Our club carried its banner and marched behind the pikemen."

The pikemen have been organised throughout the county and nearly every parish has its own contingent. They dress in period costume and carry specially manufactured pikes. Many turn up at each other's commemorations with the climax coming tomorrow week in Enniscorthy for the Vinegar Hill commemoration which Storey reckons will attract between 40,000 and 50,000 people.

"Nobody in Wexford is unaffected by the remarkable upsurge, from the ground up, of the commemorations to remember the dead of 1798," says Nicholas Furlong, historian of the period and hurling writer.

"In the county of Wexford, there were up to 30,000 dead out of a population in the whole county of about 120,000 and out of 40,000 deaths in the whole country. There's no parish, no half-parish, no family that doesn't have its own rebellion legend. Every district now has battalion and battalion of pikemen and it has created such an emotional impact all over Wexford - marching in our own parishes, commemorating our dead."

"They dress up in costume and don't just walk around, they march. There's a lot going into it, they trained two and three nights a week for it," says Storey.

According to Furlong, the equipment is authentic. "Everyone is carrying a model pike. In other years, they were simply ceremonial but these are genuine, crafted ones with a spear and a hook on it, to bring down a cavalry man."

Storey provides the grisly specifics. "That wasn't just a design, there was a purpose. One, pulling down a cavalry man, two, sticking him and three it could be used for vaulting over ditches."

All of which may make uncomfortable reading for Offaly, but noone's getting carried away about the applicability of history tomorrow.

"Whether it (the commemoration) can influence a skilful match where the cut of a ball could decide it is open to question," says Furlong, "but we'll mount a big challenge. We'll be going out as underdogs but we were underdogs two years ago against Kilkenny, Offaly, Galway and Limerick."

Wexford, despite being on the trail of their third successive Leinster title, will again be underdogs tomorrow. This is more a reflection of misfortune than the potential of the panel. Three significant players from the successes of the last two years are hors de combat with injury.

Full forward Gary Laffan may be back for the Leinster final should Wexford win. Centre back Liam Dunne will more realistically aim at the All-Ireland quarter-finals or semi-finals some weeks later, whereas last year's captain Rod Guiney won't play at all this year because of a knee injury.

The team has coped stoically with the losses, well prepared in advance by manager Rory Kinsella but any motivational device will be useful. Even two years ago when the All-Ireland was won, Wexford people looked forward to '98 and the prospect of having a competitive team for the bicentenary.

Liam Griffin, whose almost evangelical rhetoric drove the team two years ago (and whose mother - inevitably - came from Boolavogue), feels that the victory has eased pressure on the team. "Had we not won something in '96 and '97, '98 would have been a disaster, all uncontrolled fury which wouldn't have worked in our favour. With that type of pressure off, the team is more relaxed. "Ninety-eight won't win matches and a lot depends on how much of the commemorations players have seen. There's a pikeman's group in most parishes and you couldn't help but be moved at the sight of them. That should add steel."

In some ways, the commemoration isn't at all auspicious. Even at this comparatively early stage of the championship, all the other counties with '98 connections have - with the exception of the Antrim hurlers - bitten the dust. Mayo, Carlow and Wicklow have all departed the scene.

Wexford's vision is inspired by the current championship format which will qualify tomorrow's winners for at least two more matches and so allow time for their casualty list to clear up.

There are players who have been on the road a long time with Wexford and their time is nearly up. There are others whose careers are just starting. How the county handles the time of transition which is now beginning will have a major impact on the future of hurling in Wexford.

For Liam Griffin, at the junction of that future and a storied past, the essence of the commemoration is simple and has this relevance for the team that carries the hopes of a county.

"They made a stand. It was such a big thing. Ask yourself standing on a hill what made people die in such numbers. What made them walk to New Ross to fight with a pike in their hand, prepared to risk everything? They risked everything to stand up and be counted."

Tickets for the Hogan Stand and the New Stand for tomorrow's matches in Croke Park will be on sale tomorrow morning from the ticket offices on Jones's Road from 11.30 a.m..