GAELIC GAMES: There were days, and not too long ago they were too, when Dublin could win a provincial title and nobody would really notice.Famine, drought, pestilence and the late Tommy Lyons era have intervened since then and yesterday, just before teatime, a goodly portion of the old city exploded with joy.

"Losing by a point was like a crucifixion," said Laois manager Mick O'Dwyer afterwards. It was a day for such hyperbole.

You could have asked for fewer errors, but the blood-and-thunder stuff was breathtaking and in the end as the smoke cleared and the sky's blue turned grey there was one team left standing on the heath.

Dublin, whose rap sheet stated clearly that they couldn't tolerate such conditions, squeezed every drop of drama from the day and came through doggedly.

Picture it. A baying theatre of 81,025 demonic souls. Dublin in the second half having twice granted sequences of five scores to Laois. The most recent of these gestures has landed them in some trouble.

Chris Conway's point with eight minutes of normal time remaining had left Dublin a couple of points adrift and entering that zone where their knees get shaky and their bellies get rumbly. Same old, same old.

Collie Moran filches a point, but the game lurches towards its death anyway. Laois are holding on with white knuckles. Dublin locate an air pocket of hope. Bryan Cullen draws a foul and the duty roster says clearly that Tomás "Mossy" Quinn must step up to the plate.

It doesn't matter how many league games Mossy won with last-minute kicks in the dog days of winter or how many scores he got last time out. Some people don't trust him yet. He's missed two already today and there's been little mumblings of "I told you so" from the people who always know.

And the Laois fundamentalists have begun to wonder if they can't play havoc with Mossy's head, so they take up a clamouring and a caterwauling. And Mossy Quinn, with the blood of the Delaneys of Laois flowing in him and with all this barmy chaos breaking above him, places the ball on the grass just outside the 45-metre line. He does the unfussy choreography he has performed a million times in lonely practice sessions. And he nails it.

Then the announcement. There will be at least five minutes of injury-time. Knowing a draw leaves the Croke Park authorities in fixtures hell, one suspects the players will be made play until it is dark or there is a winner, whichever comes first.

Thirteen points each. The chips stacked so high now you could get dizzy just gazing at them. Ninety seconds into injury-time Dublin manufacture a 45. It all begins again. The hubbub. The placed ball. The steps backwards. 81,025 pairs of eyes on Mossy Quinn's blond head. He nails it again.

So Micko's crucifixion was done and Dublin's 45th provincial title was commandeered in a manner which had been proscribed by experts. It was a game which lacked quality for long stretches but buzzed and hummed with passion and desire. It was the end of doubt and the start of something else.

That Dublin came through an afternoon of such attrition is still surprising. When Laois emerged sturdy and unblinking after their half-time scones they were a different team to the lightweights who had filled out the numbers for a first half.

In that segment they scored just once from play and once from a deadball. They'd been lucky to trail by five points, but now they just blitzed Dublin and scored five in 11 raging minutes.

But the same Dubs who have got dizzy on so many previous occasions stood firm and began to finagle a few scores for themselves. The game grew all helter-skelter and there were times when we looked on the error count and the slap-happy surrender of possession and wondered what Armagh, Tyrone or Kerry might be making of it sitting in their armchairs pondering the long view.

In the end, though, neither Dublin nor Laois had time to worry about the impression they left behind. One part of the summer closed behind them. Another opens in front.

"We've a very happy dressingroom down there," said Pillar Caffrey afterwards. "I think Laois are a little bit unlucky that it wasn't a drawn game, but we came out with a narrow victory. We're very happy. Like the rest of ye, I'm looking on, but I believed in the lads and that they would get back into it. They'd weather the storm. Laois are a very good team. They came here with high aspirations and rightly so. We're delighted." said Bryan Cullen, whose three points from play represented a happy continuation of his form since his conversion to a forward.

"We've been down in the dumps the last couple of seasons. It was a massive game. A draw would have been a fair result in hindsight, but we're happy to nick it. In fairness, we blew them out of the water in the first half, but it's impossible to maintain that level. We knew they would come back strong. It was always going to be a one- or two-point game. I wouldn't criticise our set-up of the last few years, but the set-up is a lot better."

Dublin have four weeks till their next game and will watch next weekend's replayed Ulster final with renewed interest. Laois are back in the trenches on August 6th.

"In the end, we lost it by a point and that's all that matters," said Micko. "We just didn't play in the first half. We played terrible football. We weren't contesting the ball and we were playing it short a lot of the time, but it was amazing the way they came out in the second half and showed they could play. In the end, a draw would have been a fair result."

Micko was right, but life isn't like that and his rueful smile as the Dublin hordes swept past him at full time reinforced a truth he learned long ago. History belongs to the winners.