Sad end to great year for Offaly

The stark realities of the championship were on view for all to see. With a week left in May, two provincial champions have departed the stage. Yesterday's dies irae left Offaly and Mayo smitten in the field as Meath and Galway deposed the Leinster and Connacht football title-holders at the first hurdle.

There was something poignant about Offaly's defeat. For over a year, the county has gone from strength to strength, progressing from the Leinster preliminary pool to the dizzy heights of provincial champions, from Division Four of the NFL to League winners and everything achieved through the medium of attractive football.

Yesterday at Croke Park, they came face-to-face with the county they had rudely deposed last August. Meath's response to the showdown was intense and brooked no argument. With a defensive gameplan based on Fort Knox, the All-Ireland champions of two years ago locked up at the back and punched their weight up front for a comprehensive 12-point victory.

"We've a young team," according to Offaly manager Tommy Lyons, "and a lot to learn. Simply, their hunger was greater than ours and we'd no answer to their tactic of defending in numbers. Mark O'Reilly won the duel with Vinny Claffey and Darren Fay won the duel with Roy Malone. We didn't have the men in the middle to get quality ball in.

"At the end of the day, my young fella's communion was yesterday and that was the biggest day for him and I was up and down to Offaly all day. You know there's more to life than football. It's not the end of the road for this team.

"There's more things in life than a game of football and while we're bitterly disappointed, there's nobody dead. There's Paul Taylor up there (in Sligo) trying to prepare for a championship match next week having lost his brother.

"Today isn't judgement day for me. We'll all sit down and talk about it (continuing as manager). If you do it again, you have to sign up for the charter. There's highs and lows all the time. This is a low but I've had highs."

In the other dressing room, Meath's Trevor Giles was quietly satisfied. "They're the form team in the country and we really had to produce it. Maybe the League took a bit out of them, more than they thought. Our full-back line was super today, the rest of us just worked hard and tried to get back and give a hand. It turned out the lads didn't need it. If we had lost today, our All-Ireland win of two years ago would have been diminished."

The Mayo team they defeated in that All-Ireland final and replay of 1996 may have reached the end of the line yesterday. Mayo were beaten by old rivals Galway in front of a big crowd at McHale Park, Castlebar. There were four points between the teams by the end of a keenly-contested match in which the visitors always seemed to have the edge.

Level at half-time, Mayo lost their way after the interval and slipped incrementally behind to a 2-6 to 1-13 defeat. Kieran McDonald, goalscorer in last year's All-Ireland final against Kerry, took both Mayo's goals while the irrepressible Derek Savage scored for Galway for whom goalkeeper Martin McNamara made two very good saves to atone for culpability in McDonald's first effort.

The other championship matches were low-key affairs but Donegal experienced their usual bother in surmounting the challenge of Antrim who will now have to wait 17 years for a championship win. Donegal's win, 1-11 to 0-11, was finally achieved with a brace of second-half points from full forward Tony Boyle.

Meanwhile, a couple of minnows tangled with sharks in the Guinness hurling championship. Surprisingly, Kerry kept last week's beaten NHL finalists Waterford on the tips of their toes in Tralee until the final quarter of their Munster first round match. Level midway through the second half, Kerry eventually succumbed to a concluding blitz from the visitors who ran out eight-point winners, 0-20 to 1-9.

Finally, Meath hurlers had less to boast about in their Leinster first-round tie with Offaly. It will hardly have compensated the Offaly folk for what was to come on the football field but Babs Keating's team cantered to a 32-point win, 4-28 to 0-8 and next face the pikes of Wexford in what will presumably be a more intense struggle in next month's semi-final.