Reprieved Dowd relieved

THE bare chested Tommy Dowd stood in the middle of the whirring tape recorders like a "condemned man who had been handed a stay of execution. Dowd, the Meath captain, had a twinkle in his eyes. Finally, he said: "I'm just delighted to get another opportunity ... and isn't it great to give the GAA another £1/2 million?"

Meath were down the same road earlier this decade. The four match saga with Dublin was foremost in Dowd's mind as he sucked in the reality that Meath had fashioned a second chance out of near disaster, not in a Leinster Championship first round, this time, but in the All Ireland showdown. "I thought Colm Coyle's point was very similar to PJ Gillie's in the first drawn match with Dublin in 1991," said Dowd. "We have a golden rule in Meath: never, ever, give up. You have to keep at it right to the end."

No one could accuse Meath of being quitters.

What most concerned Dowd, however, was the lethargic nature of the first half performance. "Mayo totally outplayed us for the opening 35 minutes," said Dowd.

"We struggled to get going at all in the forward line and only our defence managed to hold out we would have been in even deeper trouble."

He added: "I always knew it would be difficult to beat Mayo. They are big and strong and they cover a lot of ground. To be honest, I'm just delighted that we have another chance. A draw is far better than being on the losing side, and that is the way it looked for too long.

"I can't explain our first half performance, especially. There was certainly no complacency. Everyone was relaxed coming into the game, but we certainly didn't underestimate them. We knew it would be tough."

Dowd revealed that he urged a change of tactics to players during the second half. "There was a stage late in the second half when we started to play for goals. But I told the lads to keep going for points. That was the only way back into the game really and I'm glad that it worked out."

But there was one occasion late in the game when Dowd sent the ball across the Mayo rectangle to what he thought was a Meath jersey. A laugh. Condemned men who get reprieves can laugh. "It was the green jersey. It confused me. I honestly thought it was one of my own players. Do you think I'd give Pat Holmes a pass like that? It definitely caught me out.

Darren Fay, a player who has made an enormous impression on the 1996 championship, went along with his captain's assessment.

"I am glad we live to fight another day," said Fay. "We knew Mayo would throw everything they had at us, but there were times it seemed we couldn't cope. It was a disappointing display, overall, but at least we salvaged something out of it in the end."

Other Meath players also had that reprieved feeling, which led to a rather upbeat mood in the camp.

Conor Martin, who was forced to scoop the ball out of the back of the net for just the second time in five championship matches this year, said: "It's good to get a second bite of the cherry. I felt so helpless when the ball went by me. I hate conceding goals, even in training.

"But no team in an All Ireland Final can expect a runaway victory but it was only in the last 15 minutes that we managed to pull our socks up and save the game."

While the Meath and Mayo camps were getting ready for a renewal of rivalries on Sunday week, GOAL's John O'Shea was wandering around the bowels of the new Cusack Stand pondering a refixture of his charity match which had been planned for either Castlebar or Navan on Wednesday evening. "I don't suppose the GAA will give me the money from the replay. Naw, I don't think they will."