SO MANY imponderables hung in the balance during the tiny corridor of time it took Paul Bealin's fiercely struck penalty kick to hit the bar and bounce out to the scarcely heard accompaniment of referee Brian White's final whistle.

Leave aside the result of this exciting but bizarre Bank of Ireland Leinster championship quarterfinal, which provided one of the better quality matches in the longrunning recent history between the counties. There was also the future of Dublin's management team which - in spite having a three-year agreement - is expected to step down after twos years in charge and the future of a whole cohort of players who have seen a lot of service together.

That it came down to survival was almost unbelievable. After cutting loose in the first half and playing the best football of the match, Meath seemed to take most of the second half off. From the 34th to the 63rd minutes, the champions failed to record a single score.

They repeatedly spurned the opportunities offered by the regular absence of Dublin's half backs who were chasing the match at the other end and, having pulled out of their tailspin just in time, had to endure last second palpitations as Dublin enacted the latest in their long running series of memorable penalty misses.

Meath won for two principal reasons. Their good spell was better than Dublin's and all their forwards got on the scoreboard from play within the first half hour. Secondly, the same forwards - albeit fairly wasteful after the interval - eked out the scores that kept them in front during the unbearably intense closing exchanges.

Dublin's forwards, on the other hand, were poor. Only one point from play came from the selected attack and only one further from the two substitute forwards introduced.

Meath made a number of changes before the throw in. Colm Coyle went back on to Jason Sherlock, with Donal Curtis moving out to wing back and switching sides with Nigel Nestor, who had a fine championship debut. Trevor Giles moved to centre forward, allowing Tommy Dowd into the right corner and Evan Kelly out to the wing.

The mood swings in the match were extreme. In the first 10 minutes Dublin looked in powerful form. Brian Stynes and Bealin dominated the middle and Sherlock beat Coyle to everything. Dessie Farrell, who played well throughout, was snapping up breaking ball and conducting the traffic between centrefield and attack.

The next phase was the decisive one which took the match from the 10th minute up until injury time in the first half. John McDermott started the run with a point from out on the right. He and centrefield partner Jimmy McGuinness began to take a grip in their area and Meath's forwards came to life.

Dowd had already been exposing Ciaran Walsh in the corner but his colleagues picked up the pace with him. A succession of scores - eight unanswered points were fired over from a variety of positions. The quality of the scores was frequently breathtaking and the build up scarcely less impressive. Half of the scores bore the imprint of Giles.

The reigning Footballer of the Year warmed up slowly in his unaccustomed centre forward role but soon began to play. He took a couple of splendid high catches in the cock pit of centrefield, laid off some exquisite passes to put others in scoring positions as well as kicking two points himself.

The match lurched into a serious crisis for Dublin in the 31st minute when a shot by Meath's Graham Geraghty was deflected by his own teammate Ollie Murphy. The deflection was enough to unbalance John O'Leary in the Dublin goal and Murphy rounded him to palm the ball into the net. Giles quickly added a free.

Dublin's reaction went to the heart of what followed. Faced with humiliation on a grand scale, the team rallied. Mick Deegan came on as a substitute and his speed and perception played a role in what was to follow. The team managed to score 1-2 in injury time and developed such irresistible momentum that the half time whistle must have come as a huge relief to a shell shocked Meath.

Essentially the response was built from the half backs. Paul Curran, Keith Barr and Eamonn Heery forsook defensive priorities and swarmed forward. Curran's 36th minute solo deep into Meath's defence culminated in a quick exchange between Farrell and Barr who drove in a goal and a potentially crippling deficit was reduced to four points, 1-6 to 1-10.

Although their momentum was slowed by the restart, Dublin's comeback continued where it had left off.

Sherlock was being well marked by Donal Curtis, who had switched with Coyle after half an hour, and needed room to exploit his pace. In the event he could only find small openings - apart from a claustrophobic chance in the Square which was well blocked by Curtis - in a sticky Meath defence where Fay and Mark O'Reilly were outstanding and as point scoring isn't his strong suit, he opted for lay offs that generally weren't capitalised on, although Jim Gavin.

Meath, in the midst of their long, barren spell, showed signs of panic. Dowd missed an obvious opening in the 49th minute. Four minutes later, Dublin's full back line was sliced open - not for the last time - by opposing forwards swarming through the untended spaces. Murphy was fouled for a penalty but Giles sent the kick wide. In the 58th minute, Giles missed an easy free by his own standards. After his hugely influential early contributions, Giles appeared unnerved by the constant offensives being launched by Barr and had an unusually ineffective second half.

Meath could have had three goals in the second half but poor finishing and an excellent save by John O'Leary kept the match tight.

Dublin's failure to exploit all these jitters explains why they lost. Having closed to within a point with a score by substitute Peter Ward, they failed to bridge the gap over the next 10 scoreless minutes by the end of which Meath had steadied and points from Brendan Reilly, McDermott and Dowd helped stretch the lead to three.

The final act in the drama arose from a foot block on Mick Galvin by Darren Fay, which referee Brian White rightly punished with a penalty. Then Bealin stepped into the twilight zone which envelops Dublin penalty takers at the Canal End goal.