PARADISE postponed. Fat Lady clears her throat, but decides not to sing. Mayo travel back across the Shannon today knowing precisely what they left behind them in Croke Park this weekend.

They had history in their hands. Forty five years of wilderness bridged. Connacht football back on its feet. No more so called weaker province. No more laments. No more insistence that, contrary to appearances, the West is actually awake. They had it all.

Then Colm Coyle, sowing mischief which even he can't have hoped for, steepled a high ball into the Mayo square. Two defenders and two forwards stood back and passed comment on what a great fellow Newton must have been to have invented gravity and all that. Apples don't bounce like footballs do. This football hopped up and over the Mayo crossbar.

"Like something you'd see in an under 12s game," said Liam McHale a couple of times afterwards. "Unbelievable".

Unbelievable, except in Meath, of course. PJ Gillie bounced one over the bar to tie a game with Dublin back in the heady summer of 1991. They practise these scores in Meath.

So Coyle celebrated. Pat McEneaney blew the final whistle. The GAA rang the bank to have a chat about extending the overdraft. The post mortems began.

Hindsight is the journalists prerogative of course. We suspected it might end this way for Mayo.

As each nudge of the clock brought them nearer to full time yesterday, so their shape became less defined and their anxiety became more tangible. You could lean down out of the stand and feel their worry. You could lean out of the stand and transmit your anxiety to them.

With five minutes left we hadn't seen Meath's equalising score, but we had sensed its arrival. We had visualised the celebrations, imagined the noise, felt the Hogan Stand shake. For 60 minutes Mayo's defence had exuded the impregnability of a well pat rolled border crossing. Then, for 10 minutes, it was open house: Mayo defenders were as welcoming and as mobile as six Statues of Liberty. Meath's huddled masses were most grateful.

Meath know they scraped a reprieve yesterday. The tenor of the Sean Boylan aftermatch lecture will have been sober consideration of how close they came to extinction. He will have left them with a wink. Things can't be as bad again.

Draws are seldom satisfactory in the short term. It is possible to weigh up the chances and trends and possessions and decide that neither team had sufficient moral argument to entitle them to the spoils. Intellectually, that might suffice. Emotionally, the heart always knows. There was always something that could have been done.

The imagination walks the tightrope. Trevor Giles will fret about that first free kick which sailed wide. Liam Me Hale and James Horan will wonder what the odds are on one hitting the post and the other grabbing the rebound and hitting the other.

Mayo will look at the closing stages when they dropped kickable chances into the arms of the Meath goalkeeper. Meath will play the segment of the tape involving the non stop cabaret of error which led to the Mayo goal.

The game finished with the momentum having swung Meath's way. In two weeks, there is no reason for the contest to take off where it finished. Meath must work out how they lot so many key contests yesterday. Mayo must find a way of replicating much of yesterday's work and a way of doing it for 70 minutes.

There is solace for both teams. Since Mayo last contested an All Ireland final, they have had worse traumas visited on them. If Mayo are to talk about momentum, their ascent from Division Three extras to being one hop of the ball away from an All Ireland is quite unstoppable.

Meath have momentum and, just as importantly, have no need to question their lineage. As the team's captain, Tommy Dowd, put it in the subdued post game atmosphere, the cardinal sin in Meath is to give up.

"We keep on going, keep on working until the final whistle. The one thing we can't face is knowing that we didn't try."

Since Meath football got serious in 1983 their speciality act has been the unlikely resurrection. In the last reel, riddled with bullets and bleeding profusely, they should be uttering fine and final words. Instead, they are usually to be found getting up off their knees and reaching for their holsters.

Their raucous supporters brought the thunder back to the Hogan Stand yesterday when they realised late on that their team spoke the same `The hell I will' lines as their more celebrated predecessors.

For their part, this Mayo team represents a welcome break from immediate predecessors. The last time Liam McHale saw a Mayo team lose its concentration on a big day in Croke Park he sat in the dressing room absorbing the implications of a 20 point defeat, studying the floor and wondering if football was worth persevering with.

Yesterday was different. Lots of positives to take away, lots of pride to walk around with.

"We came here and we played well. We made mistakes at the end but this is a young Mayo team which has come to Croke Park, had the experience of an All Ireland final and is going to go home tomorrow, not as losers but with a job to finish. The mood is good."

McHale had been involved in the afternoon's most bruising battle. He had spoken before the final of the usefulness of the two stone of extra weight he has added to his frame during his senior years. He needed every ounce yesterday for bouncing off John McDermott.

The wholeheartedness of the big midfield behemoths was replicated throughout. Trevor Giles, whom we remember being hustled into insignificance in his first Leinster final, bounced two big Mayo men off him to claim his first score from play early on.

Kevin Cahill made a key interception, flicked the ball free and was flattened by a late coming Meathman. The game might have got away from the referee Pat McEneaney had he been a less punctilious fellow. Fists were thrown in anger as Cahill received treatment. Indeed, the Mayo doctor was shoved over, but beyond that point the challenges were robust without being illegal. The football was committed without ever being beautiful.

Stakes were high, though, and players braced themselves for the worst. Play was always tentative. Golden reputations were dulled. Graham Geraghty and John Casey were eclipsed. Lesser names grew to prominence. James Horan had three points. Brendan Reilly stole the same.

"There are areas where we have to improve," John Maughan, the Mayo manager, said afterwards, "but we are going to go home proud.

"We have another chance," Sean Boylan said. "We won't be as bad again."

"It not over till the Fat Lady sings," they both said. Cue the Fat Lady. Two weeks and counting.