GAA/Leinster SFC FinalTime stood still for Westmeath and Laois at the end of a gripping Leinster football final in Croke Park yesterday. With at least a minute left to play, referee Pat McEnaney decided enough was enough, at 0-13 each, as he surveyed the wreckage of injured players and anxious faces waiting for the chance to strike the decisive blow or commit the sort of cock-up that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Hard to know who suffered more by this indulgence or - as Westmeath manager Páidí Ó Sé put it - "bit of humanity". Laois had just equalised and with that momentum might have been more likely to score but on the other hand an extra minute might have got the challengers closer to an historic first Leinster title than next Saturday's replay, also in Croke Park.
No one knows but one thing is certain: there is even greater incentive to win with the news that whoever comes second will have a third match in 13 days, against All-Ireland champions Tyrone who sharpened their claws on Galway in Saturday's qualifier.
Westmeath's first appearance at this level since 1949 brought out a fine crowd of 56,440, only a few thousand short of last year's final between Laois and Kildare. Another echo of that occasion was the presence of another Laois child in the pre-match parade.
A year ago Laois got fined when Joe Higgins's twins accompanied the team around Croke Park but this time there will be no punishment, as the draconian provision has been dropped.
The lucky child this time was Cian Byrne-Dowling, the son of Colm Byrne. Unfortunately the circuit of the field was to be the Laois full back's most serene moments on the pitch, as another youngster, 19-year-old Denis Glennon, made it a first final to remember scoring two points off Byrne and three more off Tom Kelly.
It ended in high excitement with Westmeath clinging to a fragile lead into injury-time before Laois captain Chris Conway found the gap and calmly brought the ball closer and closer before pulling the trigger.
His manager Mick O'Dwyer admitted to feeling a bit on edge during this crucial play. "I thought he was going to stay that little bit too long on it but he got it."
For a match that had been expected to be Laois's without a mortal struggle, the final turned out rather differently. Westmeath's aggressive defence was effective and so competently executed that it generated very few frees for Laois.
O'Dwyer had to make his own changes to counter the impact of Glennon and Laois ended the half with their own defence reconfigured and a few additional attacking options explored.
"I think the switches we made and the players we brought in did pretty well," he said before getting testy about the amount of wasted kicks, particularly in the second half.
"There was some woeful wide kicking like fellas way down in my part of the country used do 50 years ago. Those tactics will have to change if we're going to beat these fellas. But there was a great standard of football - the way it should be played. There was no negative football out there."
There was some negative reaction after 20 minutes when Rory O'Connell took the field. A beneficiary of some Rumpole activity down at the Four Courts last week, his temporary liberation from suspension was acclaimed by the Westmeath supporters but there also boos, presumably from those who object to such methods of evasion.
"I was always focused on it all week," O'Connell said afterwards. "I'm looking forward to the replay."
Ó Sé was happy with the performance and confident that it had added to his team's impressive learning curve this year.
"It'll tell them that they're up there with a team that's been hotly tipped for this year's championship. I was delighted with the battling qualities, the same battling qualities they showed against Offaly, Dublin and Wexford."
So it came to pass that what had been viewed as the two more clearcut provincial finals went to replays whereas the apparently close ones ended in one-way traffic.
A week after Armagh's demolition of Donegal, Mayo negotiated the Connacht title with a 10-point, 2-13 to 0-9, hammering of Roscommon in McHale Park Castlebar.
A late goal by Austin O'Malley put extra gloss on the result but the outcome had been in little doubt once Trevor Mortimer had scored the first early in match.
The Munster replay went to Kerry but not as decisively as had been expected. In fact Limerick blitzed the champions in Killarney and led 1-6 to 0-2 at one stage. Kerry recovered and established control in the second half but a goal from Eoin Keating brought Limerick right back into contention until Kerry closed it out for a 3-10 to 2-9 win.
