Poor final obscures progress out west

IN our efforts to reflect the anxieties of the age, The Irish Times on Saturday published a lengthy exegesis by Tom Humphries on the standards in foot ball. This concern with global issues foundlittle favour in the breast of one Mayoman, who observed that when Dublin reach three All Ireland finals in four years, the IT runs substantial tracts detailing the achievement, but when Mayo get to a final, suddenly football is in crisis.

Whether the absence of Dublin had anything to do with it, the consensus after Sunday's match was that it had been an exciting but poor quality match.

It was strange coming out of Croke Park after an All Ireland final to see so many sombre faces. Mayo knew they had thrown away a great chance (even if they win in a fortnight, they still threw it away on Sunday), and Meath had been exposed some way short of the expectations excited by the wins over Dublin and Tyrone.

The consensus was right in certain respects. It was a loose, shapeless sort of match during which neither team managed to string together even brief passages of their best football. Mayo came closest with a tight, driven defence and superior midfield moving the ball well into advanced positions.

Unfortunately for them, the final pass into the full forwards went astray, either because nobody showed for the ball or because when they did - and David Nestor made several good runs away from Martin O'Connell - the move was ignored or not noticed.

Meath, on the other hand, never really got going but benefitted from splendid individual performances by Darren Fay, John McDermott, O'Connell and yet again Trevor Giles. Being Meath, they never allowed the poverty of their form to undermine confidence in their ability to recover.

Accepting all this, however, shouldn't blind us to the many positive aspects of the weekend. Football badly needed a lift and it received one. Much reference has been made to how dismally the big ball game compares with the sweeping patterns and mystique of hurling.

That is natural because football is an inferior game - too complex, unsure of what its rules should be and increasingly prone to subvert skill with physical attributes and clever tactics - but it is an exciting and more popular sport than hurling.

Sunday was a gripping afternoon, poised between history and desperation, and the flat atmosphere at the end owed at least something to the curious fashion in which Pat McEneaney ended the match before adding on sufficient injury time.

The match statistics indicated a contest with a fair bit to recommend it. It was low on fouls - 32 frees is 12 fewer than the 1989 final between Cork and Mayo, a match that set the benchmark for wholesomeness in recent times. There was some great high catching by Liam McHale and John McDermott, as well as exceptional displays in defence by a variety of players.

The excellence of the full back lines robbed the match of more conventional spectacle and subdued the sense of menace that adds to the atmosphere of matches. Tactically, the play at times verged on the incoherent, but the play was as fast as it was loose.

IF THERE'S one area in which football needs to emulate hurling, it is that of bringing new teams to the top. Clare and Wexford, two of the most popular hurling counties, have won All Irelands and there is a sense that any of the leading eight counties could also win one. For the fringe counties, Laois, Waterford, Dublin and Antrim, there must be encouragement that tradition doesn't have to be the end of the road.

Football has enjoyed a positive decade in this regard. Two counties have won All Irelands for the first time, and this year saw two teams come from nowhere - in terms of championship prospects - to an All Ireland final.

The biggest blot on the landscape had been the enfeeblement of Connacht's challenge in the last 19 years. In that time, no team from the west, with the exception of Mayo in 1989, has come close to winning a championship. Until this year.

The mould won't be broken until the Sam Maguire goes west, but, since the weekend, it has been badly cracked. For a team to emerge from Division Three and Connacht and come within seconds (or hours, depending on how much of a chance referee Pat McEneaney was prepared to give the draw) of the All Ireland is dramatic evidence of the levelling off of football's competitiveness.

Ironically, Connacht's credentials were thrown into most serious doubt by Mayo in 1992 and 1993, the two worst performances by the county at an All Ireland stage in living memory. But other western counties suffered double digit margins of defeat in the years since Galway contested the championship on a serious, if ultimately unavailing, basis.

Of course, the great good a victory for the west would achieve is in the balance. If Meath win, the whole episode and Mayo's evaporating six point lead becomes another sorrowful mystery from Connacht, one of the worst giveaways the province has conjured up in recent times.

Nonetheless, for the first time in 30 years, a Connacht team has emerged from an All Ireland final without losing, a sequence that covers five matches since Galway's 1966 success.

They also looked the better team and should have won, only two years after the theory wash being floated that the Connacht championship was of such low standard that it left its winners: fatally handicapped when facing teams from the other three provinces.

In the space of three years, the Connacht representative turned a 20 point defeat, the last occasion on which they faced the Munster champions, into a six point victory.

John Maughan's extraordinary progress this year heads towards a new and unexpected challenge. The long faces in the Mayo camp and the sense of weariness at having to do it all again suggested that they will return to training tonight with heavy hearts and a foreboding that they've missed the boat.

That sense will be deepened by reference to Sean Boylan's track record with replays. In 1988, he flashed the knife extensively between the drawn All Ireland final with Cork and the replay, making three changes. His teams got steadily better during the four match campaign against Dublin five years ago.

It doesn't, however, have to be that gloomy for Mayo. They have racked up the experience of an All Ireland final and taking into account the league quarter final, outplayed the opposition for the second lime this year. As one knowledgeable Meath supporter put it: "If Mayo keep their nerve, they'll win it."

One way or the other, its turned back into a four province championship.