FOOTBALL'S greatest follier-upper.

Yesterday, at the matinee, they wrung some more great drama out of an old and familiar situation. Leinster football. Sure, you know the set up, you know the characters. You just never know the twist.

Old and familiar. Dublin were the loveable fallguys yet again. Old and familiar, yet strangely compulsive. Meath went capering on, the artful dodgers of our era.

Edge of the seat, spill your popcorn, bite your nails down to the knuckle stuff. Dublin and Meath, out on the tightrope where they do their duelling. No net folks, look, no net. For one to pass the other must fall. Meath parry for 30 draining minutes after the intermission. Dublin can't draw a drop of blood.

It's not human.

Then.

GASP! 62,342 jaws drop open in Croke Park.

Meath step back, throw their blade to the ground and raise their hands.

Penalty! Penalty! Penalty!

What a plot.

And?

Dublin, all a fluster, take a swipe and fall into the chasm below.

Again. Tune in next time folks.

So Paul Bealin, head down, heartbroken, joined the ranks of current Dublin players who have missed penalties on big occasions. The martyrs of the big time. His thumping shot came down off the crossbar as Conor Martin, the Meath goalkeeper advanced quickly from his line. Dublin responded tardily to the rebound. By the time the ball came to hand referee Brian White had blown the final whistle.

This decade may have brought Meath just a single All Ireland title, but they have swashbuckled more than anybody since Errol Flynn. They are the lords of derring do, the high fliers who will only go by the scat of the pants.

Dual players: Russian roulette and Gaelic football.

They won their All Ireland last year over two games the world thought they should have lost. Who cares. They sustained themselves yesterday by having the sheer cunning to keep their heads as Dublin tried to overrun them. They didn't score for fully 30 minutes of the second half. Then they scored three times in five minutes. Bang! Bang! Bang!

The headline news is that Dublin missed a penalty with the last kick of the game, just like they did in the Leinster final of 1988.

The critical subtext is that Meath also missed a penalty, and at least one easy free and a couple of good goal chances. Dublin can go away feeling that they were unlucky. Privately, Meath can feel what winners always feel. Luck has very little to do with it. To bolster the argument, they can point to a passage in the first half where they scored 1-9 and conceded just a point in the space of 23 minutes.

During that period they compiled some of the best scores seen in Croke Park in many years.

"We played some wonderful football in the first half out there today," said winning manager Sean Boylan. "Dublin came back and played some wonderful football after, the break, but we hung in there."

Mickey Whelan, the Dublin manager, has another year of his contract to run, but he indicated earlier in the year that if his side were to lose to Meath in the Leinster first round that he would be quitting. Tactfully, he didn't added his resignation to the bonfire of troubles building up around his team yesterday.

"It's not the time to talk about that," he said as he left the Dublin dressing room. "I'll speak with the panel and my fellow mentors first."

So as the Gaelic football summer takes shape, one of the great rites of any season is over and done with. Dublin head towards a vacuum and transition. Meath roll on to the next round, where they meet Kildare.

We will be lucky if we see greater drama before the year is out.