LIKE so much madness, it was hard to see the method in it.
Meath took home the All Ireland Football Championship yesterday after an afternoon of ugly, frenetic football which left theme with their noses in front as the final whistle sounded. Mayo take home all the regrets from a match which will require a prolonged and detailed post mortem.
Two dismissals and scope for a handful more, a penalty and a couple of goals which hinged the game. Never mind the quality - count the casualties, chronicle the incidents.
Replays always have the drawn games as their prologue. On yesterday's evidence, more than mere winning or losing passed as unfinished business two weeks ago.
It is traditional on such occasions for the pious patrons of the GAA to announce that they were "treated to a spectacle the likes of which they hope never to see again". Save it. If we hope never to see the likes of it again, the video evidence will be analysed and all those striking blows for the glory of their county will be suspended.
More likely is a quiet acceptance of the inevitability of the whole thing. Both Meath and Mayo had spoken during the past week about their determination to stand up to each other. In the interlude between the end of the scrapping and the start of the dismissals, a low guttural roar of approval went around the ground. Both teams had stood up to each other. In the real politik of Gaelic football everyone took that to be a good sign.
From the fight itself there were no clear cut winners but the discipline meted out by referee Pat McEneaney was generally deemed to have favoured Meath. Liam McHale, Mayo's totemic mid fielder, nursing a suspected broken jaw as a result of several well swung blows, was sent to the line along with Meath's Colm Coyle. McHale's dismissal did incalculable damage to the Mayo cause.
Thereafter, the teams settled down to a game of football only lightly sprinkled with atrocities. Whatever delicate patterns the sides had planned on weaving were forgotten about as players struggled to cope with the howling winds and the sudden dwindling of their number.
Yet, from the mayhem, Meath picked up their sixth all Ireland title, the county's third under the stewardship of Sean Boylan.