Suddenly it was over. When the longest season in Gaelic football history shuddered to a finish yesterday it was fitting that it was a team which took the scenic route who were still standing. Galway climbed highest, marched longest, and overcame the most.

This was the most quixotic of recent All-Ireland wins, a romantic defiance of the odds and an outcome that none among the attendance of 70,482 would have guessed at if surveyed during the intermission.

It's the tallest of tales really. Galway almost sundered themselves with infighting in May. They lost to Roscommon on the first weekend in June. Put themselves back together to beat Wicklow four weekends later and then continued the healing with an extraordinary series of wins against Armagh, Cork, Roscommon, Derry and now Meath.

Along the way they kept tilting at windmills until they rediscovered the zestful attacking football which brought them success after the long hunger back in 1998.

They played their way through therapy and meanwhile drew on some old fashioned motivational tools.

"The media made a great job of us," said totemic midfielder Kevin Walsh "It's been very easy to pick up one or two papers and shove it in front of a few fellas' faces. It's motivation in itself, they were more or less saying we were flukey to be there, the last year or two. So it's sweet."

Sweet but nourishing.

It has been a long and strange summer for Galway and yesterday's final made an unlikely end to their adventure. The third quarter of the game had an almost surreal quality to it as Meath began shipping water fore and aft while Galway serenely picked of their points.

Imagine this. In a 20-minute spell Meath lose Ollie Murphy when the player of the championship thus far broke his finger. Then Nigel Nestor gets sent off for a second yellow card before Trevor Giles misses a penalty.

Yet if Meath needed any more proof of the old saw which warns that just because your wife dies it doesn't mean you're house can't burn down, they had only to gaze at Pβdraig Joyce.

While calamity was piled upon disaster, Joyce was at the other end putting together a sequence wherein he scored eight Galway points in a row as part of a scoring performance to stand with those of Galway elders like Seβn Purcell and Frankie Stockwell.

The victory represents a remarkable triumph for Galway's manager John O'Mahony, a schoolteacher from Ballaghdereen, who has now taken Galway to two wins and one beaten final appearance in four seasons in charge. In his two winning appearances as a Galway manager he has outsmarted no less than Mick O'Dwyer and Seβn Boylan on All-Ireland final day.

At times this year he has looked drained and tired by the job but yesterday took the lines from his face.

He now stands among the greatest Gaelic football managers of modern times, his work with Galway, Leitrim and Mayo having almost singlehandedly raised the stock of Connacht football. Yesterday, his use of the extra man - rotating the task among three player after Nigel Nestor was dismissed - frustrated a Meath team who have often taken inspiration from such setbacks in the past.

"It was a great feeling," he said afterwards. "We had something to prove. Take a guy like Pβdraig Joyce, a lot of assessments are made on players after five minutes. Players like Pβdraig Joyce shouldn't always have to be proving themselves. He was written off, but in many ways this whole team was written off."

As for Joyce himself he finished the game (and any arguments there ever were about his ability) with 10 points to his credit, half of them from play. He finishes the season as the championship's top scorer by some distance, averaging just short of seven points per game. His rise to eminence reflects also a change in the power centre of the Galway side since 1998. If that All-Ireland represented a triumph for the elder core of the team, this victory was brought about by the succeeding generation.

If they have been written off in the past 12 months, the epicentre of the disillusion has been Galway itself, where the fractiousness of the team's early season was keenly parsed and analysed.

Trouble presents opportunity, of course, and management and players alike jumped at the chance to come to Croke Park in the underdog role, having watched Meath dice the All-Ireland champions Kerry into small pieces a few weeks ago.

As John O'Mahony arrived in from the jungle of well-wishers and hangers-on on the Croke Park field, he met his counterpart Seβn Boylan outside the door of the Galway dressingroom. Boylan had already visited the Galway team to give them the benediction of gracious words. "I missed you again Seβn," said O'Mahony. "Well done, fella," said Boylan as the two embraced, "have a great night."

They were quick words exchanged between equals. As O'Mahony disappeared to join his team, Boylan paused to reflect on a bizarre afternoon of football.

"It was all to play for. In the second half they went up a gear and we just weren't able to do it. We just weren't able to respond. It didn't happen today. We honour Galway and give them full credit.

"There would be no excuses. Nigel going off was significant, Ollie going off was significant but there's days that those things will go for ya and there's days they won't there's no excuses.

"On a day like today when they were the ones who took the game to us, raised it to a higher level than we could get to, we'd no answer. Doesn't happen to us often and I'm sorry for the lads but Galway went through the pain of losing last year and they've come back. I'm delighted for John O'Mahony."

And with that Boylan disappeared down the cool corridor to immerse himself in the silence of his team, to check that Ollie Murphy had gotten away to hospital, that the detritus of yet another campaign was put away.

For Galway this epic season will never be put to bed. The team of 1998 have often heard it said on nights when drink has been taken and talk has been loose that they "only" beat Kildare four years ago. After a run this summer which took them far and wide and gave them a fixture list from hell they are the worthiest of champions.

Last words in the Galway dressingroom went to their captain Gary Fahey: "Every player in our team lifted themselves today. To watch it was unbelievable. At the end, with the crowd cheering the passes and us so far ahead, well, I don't know. You could never write a script for a game like that."