PERHAPS last Sunday's skirmishes had their root in the moments before the ball was thrown in for the drawn game a fortnight previously. There with Pat McEnaney looking on impassively and with the TV cameras unblinkingly catching it all, John McDermott and Liam McHale crashed off each other like Dodgem cars. Again and again. Boom! Boom! Boom! Neither of the two midfield behemoths was going to yield psychological advantage.

Pat McEnaney wasn't about to step between them.

Perhaps the root lies deeper. In Mayo as August gave way to September they wondered if the controversy which surrounded Meath's bruising defeat of Tyrone would have an inhibiting effect on Meath in the final. Remember that time. Radio call-ins, lingering pictures of bandaged Tyrone players and a long debate about the possibility of standing on a rival's head completely by accident had concentrated minds on the issue of physicality. Maybe Meath would, ahem, be treading more carefully.

After the drawn game Mayo decided that things were going to get worse. Referee Pat McEnaney had been extraordinarily permissive, awarding just 32 frees, permitting an early brawl to go unchecked and ignoring a couple of rough and late third man tackles. One late third man tackle by a Meath forward following through on Maurice Sheridan particularly rankled in Mayo as did an incident where a Meath player drew a kick on manager John Maughan in a dispute over a bottle of water.

Mayo told themselves that for the second game the physical stakes would inevitably be raised a little. Told themselves also that they wouldn't be intimidated, that they needed more physical presence themselves, especially inside the opposition 21.

One afternoon in training the weekend before the replay a couple of Mayo players got carried away with the exuberance of their own efforts. A couple of clips were delivered. The incidents were forgotten about, left behind on the pitch. No harm to see fellas keyed up and ready to dance if the occasion demanded it, said the Mayo selectors. Fellows like that will be needed.

In Meath the intentions were more opaque. The success of the county has always been built from a platform of uncompromising physicality. In this matter they learned the hard way, crashing year after year in the bad times against incredibly physical Dublin teams who would hit hard when the ref was watching and hit harder again when he wasn't. Bemused, Meath would carry their wounded from the pitch and regroup, more critically they would become distracted and wind up losing close games year after year. The difficulty with most on the pitch violence from a pure playing point of view is the distraction it causes not the injury.

Eventually Meath ratcheted their own game up not just to a matching level of physicality but to a point where they could intimidate opponents and not even become distracted by the prospect. Teams (like Mayo did last Sunday) wondered long and hard about the physical agenda.

Meath just took the rough and the smooth as part of the same ball game. In the great days few forwards thought about dazzling solo runs towards the Meath goals without thinking also of the likely encounters with Mick Lyons, Liam Harnan, Colm Coyle and Kevin Foley. For Lyons et al physical presence was just a part of getting on with the business.

When Meath rebuilt they went looking for something like the same presence at the back and down the middle. This year Darren Fay, the most Meathlike and the most excellent of all their empirically tested full backs, was buttressed by the immovable presence of McManus in front of him. Coyle would drift from his wing back position to patrol the area between McManus and Fay while the irrepressible and seemingly indestructible Trevor Giles swept right across the line from his wing forward position. Stationed in front of all that was McDermott's mix of athleticism and aggression.

Opposition players winning the ball in the middle of the field were faced with the prospect of running at this thicket of well armed turrets or hoofing a quick ball towards the Meath 21-yard line before a Meath midfielder made bruising contact. So it was for Mayo. Typically the high ball would be contested by John Casey for Mayo and Darren Fay, Colm Coyle and Martin O'Connell acting in concert for Meath.

Nothing wrong with that from Meath's point of view. With levels of fitness and coaching almost identical in most top counties now the art of winning big championship matches can be boiled down to the elimination of unforced errors from your game. That and squeezing the opposition into making errors. The losing of last Sunday's game might have represented the coming together of a thousand different parameters for Mayo but it boiled down to a couple of unforced errors where John Casey lost possession for Tommy Dowd's goal and Colm McManamon lost possession for Brendan Reilly's winning point.

It looked more complex than that, of course, when Mayo were planning for the replay. Having been reduced to the hoofing option the first day, Mayo weren't entirely sure that they wouldn't be forced to descend to that level last Sunday with Colm Brady being introduced as a third midfielder and the wind likely to be more of an influence.

As such Mayo looked for ways to ensure that John Casey got the chance to go one on one with Darren Fay under the high ball. They assumed that James Horan's three points in the drawn game would be sufficient to draw Colm Coyle into marking Horan more tightly and leaving Fay unprotected. They needed a distraction then for Martin O'Connell.

So it came to pass that the bulk of Anthony Finnerty replaced David Nestor's diminutive and sparky presence. Nestor suffered primarily because of his lack of inches. He got frees on several occasions during the drawn game but wasn't spotted by busy mid-fielders. Martin O'Connell recognising that Nestor was a diminishing influence spent his time doing janitorial work in front of the goal, sweeping up after Darren Fay, catching any breaks that were going.

Mayo needed some physical presence inside to distract O'Connell and give the feisty Mark O'Reilly in the other corner something to think about. So they sent out a message in settling for bulk instead of speed. Finnerty went in on O'Reilly, the barrell-chested Dempsey rubbed shoulders with O'Connell.

On the day Meath won the toss and opted to let Mayo make the first half running giving the Connacht champions the dubious benefit of the strong wind. Psychologically that was the last thing that Mayo or the game needed. Heavily criticised for excessive use of the long high ball the first day Mayo felt themselves being hustled into adopting the tactic again on an afternoon when they expected the physical stakes to be raised.

Critically Fay won the first high ball over Casey's head. Same old story unfolding. Next a more promising ball placed out to the corner was won by Finnerty who fed Horan for the game's first wide.

Sheridan then kicked a wide from a free after almost four minutes of play. Three attacks with the wind at their backs and Mayo had two wides and a surrender of possession to show. Four minutes isn't a long time but a pattern was emerging.

When Sheridan took his second free on five minutes and McDermott caught it cleanly on the Meath goal line it was time for an early demonstration of Mayo's new physical presence. Instructor for the day: Ray Dempsey.

Dempsey's challenge on McDermott caused the midfielder to drop the ball into Darren Fay's hands. The full back barrelled forward suffering high tackles from both Dempsey and Anthony Finnerty as he left the small square. McDermott, O'Connell and Colm Coyle were on hand to deliver instant retribution.

Had it stayed like that perhaps 30 men would have finished the game. Too many points rankled, however. The drawn game was the prologue to all that followed. A similar scrap had gone unpunished, bar one booking for Meath. There was nothing to be lost by standing up and being counted now surely. Duly Enda McManus arrived high, catching Finnerty on the back of the head with an elbow.

As Finnerty fell and McManus bounced off the pack, Liam McHale made an unfortunately spectacular entry, his airborne feet arriving a split second before the rest of his six foot five inch frame. He didn't make contact with Fay (who was still engaged with Dempsey) but leapt through a gap in the schemozzle and into the clutches of a waiting gang of Meath players.

In the ugliness that followed McHale cannot entirely consider himself blameless either in thought or deed. He arrived with intent and contrary to the pleadings of the Mayo County Board struck the odd blow, even if only in self defence. Technically, there was adequate reason to dismiss McHale; in terms of natural justice, however, others gave Pat McEnaney greater reason to send them to the line.

McHale suffered the gauntlet of a series of attacks by Meath players, enduring a kick from behind from one peripheral figure in the fracas and suffering the indignity of being jumped on from behind, held down and given a couple of blows to the face. Having being funnelled through this he emerged face-to-face again with his mid-field adversary John McDermott.

With McEnaney standing beside the pair watching intently, McDermott delivered almost half a dozen blows to the head of McHale who was bent over at the time. McHale threw the odd despairing punch upwards but eventually fell to the ground. McDermott backed off looking for action elsewhere. McEnaney gave him a second glance and then moved on to examine more brawls.

With two umpires, the referee and a linesman all immediately on hand the GAA will be alarmed that the situation was allowed escalate as quickly as it did and that the justice meted out wasn't of a better quality. Mayo came away from the fracas and the dismissals considering that Meath had been permitted to sacrifice a pawn for a Queen.

If McHale, the key player in Mayo's planning, can consider himself slightly unlucky, Colm Coyle has less cause for complaint.

Examination of the video shows that separately in the course of the minute or so of fighting Coyle had engagements with Dempsey, Finnerty, McHale and David Brady.

Coyle can argue of course that he wasn't the worst either.

Technology doesn't allow measurement sufficient to provide a clear cut winner in that category. Throughout it all, for instance, Jim McGuinness and Colm Mc Manamon engaged in a battle so imbued with vicious intent that it has a sort of comic strip hilarity to it.

Attempting to kick each other high and hard, they in turn grab each other's legs and go waltzing about the place, the one holding the other's leg. Paddy Russell, perhaps still suffering shellshock form last year's final, watched all this in his capacity as linesman. Neither player got the line nor an entry into the referee's book.

A more detailed analysis of the subsidiary fights and scraps is the tedious but unavoidable business +of the Games Administration Committee next week. Players arrived in fleets from all corners of the pitch. The usual pushing and shoving, which generally characterises such incidents, was replaced by players swinging in great windmill arcs at each other, the use on several occasions of headlocks, the delivery of quite a few kicks and repeated incursions by several enthusiastic warriors from either side who made sure that the fighting failed to subside, even as McEnaney consulted with his other officials.

Whatever the fallout from the early brawl the fact remained that Mayo still had the winning of the game at their disposal at that point. Pat Fallon, in superlative form in training all through the later stages of the championship, might have been introduced earlier, the running game which Mayo used to such good effect when forced to in the second half would have served them well even with a wind at their backs.

It was evident from early on that whatever about muscle they had no speed in the full forward line. More critically, given their tactics, they allowed their full forward line to be dragged deep towards the middle third of the field. Scores were always going to be hard to come by.

Legislative inconsistencies probably lingered in their thoughts at half-time. For the wrong reasons. Mayo considered (incorrectly) that the penalty superbly converted by Giles had been unfairly awarded. Certainly it robbed them of the momentum provided by P J Loftus's goal but the tape shows that Ken Mortimer clearly held Dowd back following an error by the Mayo goalkeeper. It is Loftus's goal which was, in fact, illegal. Loftus dispatched the ball to the net after taking 1O steps without playing the ball.

Other major inconsistencies went against Mayo, however. Geraghty, never more than a peripheral presence before the final minutes, escaped with two high late challenges, one on Kevin Cahill, the other on Maurice Sheridan. On the second occasion, after Geraghty came in on Sheridan and flattened him, referee McEnaney compensated by booking James Horan and Martin O'Connell for more minor infringements seconds later.

Five times Mayo were whistled for taking quick frees or kick outs, and once indeed in the 13th minute Meath were whistled for the same infraction. The message throughout was that the quick free wouldn't be allowed. Then minutes from time, with the game in the balance, Meath got their second goal.

PAT McEnaney was perhaps within his rights to allow Geraghty's quick, free pass to Dowd which resulted in the latter's critical goal but for Mayo it was the inconsistency at a crucial juncture of the game which will rankle. The well intentioned introduction of the quick free kick to football has its greatest weakness in a situation like last Sunday's where a close-in free is permitted to proceed. The situation was aggravated by McEnaney's fussiness over quick frees and kick outs earlier in the game.

The rule requiring players, except for the kicker, to be 13 metres from the ball during a free kick - falls perforce of the quick free rule and it is well nigh impossible for a defence to organise itself in such, a situation. On Sunday Kevin Cahill was retreating to the goal line, the normal reaction of the full back when a close in free is awarded. Pat Holmes who had committed the foul on Geraghty was backpeddling. John Madden, surprised to see the ball slipped to the unattended Tommy Dowd (about 10 yards away from Geraghty), came out flailing. Perhaps if everyone had stood stock still with surprised expressions on their faces the goal would have been disallowed.

There were other incidents and other issues. Fouls on both sides, tactics designed to cope with the deficiencies and exigencies of the modern game. Bunching in mid-field, a tendency to put paid to promising moves before they have a chance to develop, only the very best players, Giles in particular, Dowd and Horan to slighter lesser extents, had the composure and presence to make significant individual impacts.

Perhaps Meath's win will mark a watershed. Perhaps the GAA will act decisively to make sure something similar never happens again. A move towards semi-professional referees would be a start. A systematic trawl through the video and heavy punishments all round would be another positive step. The balance of the solution lies in preventing such brawls in the future not in devising a method to deal with them as they occur.