Summer in the air as Dubs take off

Gaelic Games/ Leinster Football Championship/ Dublin 1-12 Meath 1-10: Never mind the weather, here comes the summer. Dublin and Meath popped the cork with a wonderfully combustible match at Croke Park yesterday.

In the corridors behind the stands you could hear GAA blazers sighing contentedly. Never mind the quality, feel the attendance. There's a bandwagon rolling and its livery is blue. Blue is the colour of money.

The season is officially open. So are the coffers. There were 65,865 people in Croke Park yesterday and there'll be the same again at least when the semi-final double-header takes place in a fortnight's time.

If the football was limited at times yesterday the excitement was enough to make one sentimental. It was one of those games which forces you to smile and shake your head. Meath and Dublin. Same old same old.

The venerated houses of Leinster stepping up and seizing the day. The play was frenetic. There were bodies stretched on the turf as the pack swept over them, the crowd was in ceaseless hubbub, every ball was a controversy in the making, reputations were made and good men were broken. Theatre.

For the younger players who had never experienced such intensity and passion it was a high-water mark in their footballing lives.

In the end Dublin escaped out of Croke Park with a two-point win and if on balance that was about right as a margin, they were more than happy to take it. Meath aren't for beating. Meath are for struggling past. You could weigh the truth of that old adage by the exuberance of the Dublin celebrations at the end. All-Ireland wins have been greeted more calmly.

Seán Boylan (need we use the words "genial", "herbalist" or "Dunboyne"?) almost pulled one of the finer coups of his long and brilliant career. Without Trevor Giles, handing debuts to five young fellas and operating to the alleged indifference of most of his countymen, his team led by two points at half-time having splurged with five wides into the bargain.

They also scored some of the sweetest points seen all afternoon as Graham Geraghty and Brian Farrell cut the Dublin defence to ribbons at times. One score in particular stands out. A long, high ball dropping wide, way, way, wide. And suddenly, Geraghty is on the endline and grabbing possession. He takes a step back inwards, loses Paddy Christie, and curls a magnificent point. Who takes three points off Paddy Christie?

Dublin, to be fair, lived with those threats at all day long and in the end learned to cope with them. If it wasn't Geraghty doing the damage it was going to be Farrell, a fine young forward from Nobber, but as Meath's edge dulled after the break so, too, did the influence of that pair.

There was one passage of play which revealed definitively that this was not the old Meath. Into injury-time and two points in it when Dublin spilled a ball inside the Meath 14-yard line. Meath began building. A handpass, then another, working their way out on the Cusack side. About 65,000 minds thought for an instant of Kevin Foley, but then the ball was punted in a panic down the field and lost and we looked from the stands down to David "Jinksy" Beggy's bald plate to see if his head was shaking.

So Dublin got clean away but not before communion with a packed Hill 16. Thousands of blue-sleeved arms raised above heads as the cacophony competed with that annoyingly loud music which drowns every thought at the end of games in Croke Park.

They'll be selling blue jerseys by the bucketload in Arnotts this week.

Whether an afternoon like this is sufficient to restore Dublin to the ranks of contenders remains to be seen. They mixed the good and the bad all through and as their captain Christie conceded, "we didn't play at all well. All we have done is get halfway to a Leinster final."

Halfway to a Leinster final isn't bad, though. After eight minutes it might as well have been halfway to eternity. Meath, with Graham Geraghty already making mischief everywhere, cut in from the left. As usual, it was Geraghty in possession. He found Joe Sheridan who shaped up to shoot, saw the block coming in, dummied, regathered the ball and hammered it to the net, via the underside of the crossbar.

So much just then for the theory that the people of Meath were indifferent to this team and the outcome of this game. The cheering shook the ground. Old style.

Dublin's recovery suggested a hunger and a resolve which will be useful in the long run but they undoubtedly have their problems. For quite a while their wing backs were exposed. And their wing forwards, while not mute, contributed little to the choir. Alan Brogan finished with a hefty enough total behind his name in brackets but Dublin can hardly have expected the bonus of Mark O'Reilly being left on Brogan all afternoon.

And the free-taking remains a worry. Tomás Quinn got Dublin out of jail more than once over the winter break and appeared to have cracked the secret of reliability.

Yesterday he kicked nervily and missed chances from both dead balls and from play which he is capable of putting over with his eyes closed.

The Dubs will hope that it was just a bad day at the office because even though young Mark Vaughan popped over two frees without apparently altering his own pulse rate it's not yet certain if Vaughan will be a day-in-day-out starter.

That's stuff for another afternoon. Yesterday the Dubs and the Hill stood and applauded each other. That colourful, unique bond is worth a goal head start on any given Sunday. There'll be a few of those before it is all done.