WERE Job alive and with us, there would be more efficient ways of bringing him around. Forget about smiting with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. If you really wanted him to "curse God and die", a trip to some of this season's football matches would have done the trick.

"My bowels boiled and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me," would be an acid-house chorus compared to the infinitely more dismal, "Yea, did I rest on the Canal End at the Leinster final".

Football's lack-lustre season progresses. Both Sundays dedicated to the provincial finals were blighted with horrible weather: steaming humidity exacerbated by pouring rain. It can't have helped the standard, but neither does it fully excuse it.

Some consolation can be taken from the fact that the season is now heading for its interesting (or less uninteresting) phase. Three of the All-Ireland semi-finalists are new teams, and if it might be even more exciting were they to be from, say, Sligo, Tipperary and Kildare, the return of Mayo, Kerry and Meath will lend an element of novelty to proceedings.

You wouldn't, however, be impossible to please if you pointed out that the weekend just past - for all that it announced a new arrival on the inter-county scene and confirmed the standing of the one outstanding team left - should also give us pause for some small regret.

The defeat of both Dublin and Down in all likelihood signifies the end of the road for the two teams of the decade to date. There was quite a difference between the two: Down, at their best, were stunning and easily the most accomplished team of the 1990s at their worst, they were dreadful, a sinful squandering of athleticism and football skill.

Dublin, on the other hand, toiled year in, year out. Despite careful husbandry, they seemed destined never to have quite enough money for what they wanted. When things eventually worked out for them, there was a most unusual wave of sympathy.

After all those years of hood winking more earnest teams with a street-wise urbanity, Dublin had found the tables turned as counties with flashier forwards (yes, even Derry) and more tricks up their sleeve took them, four years running. So, when 10 months ago the All-Ireland was finally won, the rest of the country - outside of Ulster (some of it) - were pleased for them.

It might have been Clare's historic hurling All-Ireland, or the couple of controversies and woeful standard that attended the football final, but Dublin struggled to command full recognition for their achievement.

When Dublin's record is considered, it makes remarkable reading. Given that teams are supposed to be able to hear only a certain amount of misfortune and morale-sapping reverses, Dublin's perennial re-presentation for yet another excruciation setback is impressive.

It wasn't so much that they won an All-Ireland, last year, it was that they won one after losing one, after losing a semi-final, after losing a final, after losing a first-round so protracted that they ended up having been seen by bigger cumulative crowds than most All-Ireland champions.

Every defeat was memorable - memorably traumatic for Dublin. The Kevin Foley goal on July 6th, 1991, and the stricken aftermath in the Mansion House. A year later, back to the Mansion House in a pitifully bedecked bus all started up for All-Ireland champions when the Sam Maguire was in fact chuffing off on a train with Donegal.

There then followed the disastrous nervous meltdowns in the closing minutes against, first, Derry and then Down when possession was adequate but disposition wasn't. And these are only the tips of the icebergs. In between these events was all the trauma of losing matches that could have been won, the painful process of picking up the pieces and again submitting to the unrelenting harshness of training for another campaign.

IN THE light of all that, it was unsurprising that Dublin looked jaded on Sunday when faced with the pepped-up challenge of a young Meath team.

The falling curtain made all the sadder the extent to which some people, even within the county, appeared to disrespect their achievements.

By referring to last year's All-Ireland win as lucky, an injustice was done to the huge effort put into the victory by so many players - not just over the course of all those bitterly disappointing campaigns, but during last summer.

The final win over Tyrone might have been ugly and forgettable, but the devastation of Meath - containing, ironically, the seeds of Dublin's destruction by allowing Scan Boylan conduct root-and-branch reforms - was the best and most enduring performance of the season. It was also the most impressive monument to the tenacity of a team that always fought to make the most of less-than-abundant resources.

Maybe they'll come again, but with an average age of 28 - compared to Meath's under 23 - the days of being contenders look to have passed for that particular team.

Down were, as stated above, different. In flight - particularly in 1991 against Kerry for opening quarter and in the decisive breakaway from Meath in the middle of the second half - they were irresistible. For a team from nowhere, they were a phenomenon. Five years ago, an Ulster county hadn't won an All-Ireland for 23 years. It was typical of Down to have had the quick-turning self-confidence to shatter recent tradition.

There were also bad times. Unlike Dublin, Down either soared or nose-dived; there was little in between until last weekend. An intelligent, articulate but frequently wilful panel, they were capable of patching up horrendous rows with manager Peter McGrath, and the county board. In 1994, the realisation that they would all sink or swim together generated a unity of purpose that won an All-Ireland.

In addition, the temperamental brilliance was apt to give way to some truly awful performances when they showed neither pride nor resilience. Had they been able to temper these wild extremes of behaviour, it is a far from lofty flight of fancy to say that Down would have won a four-in-a-row.

The irony is that their swan-song on Sunday can go down as the one achievement they hadn't managed in six championships: losing honestly and with distinction. They say they'll be back but it's hard to concur, given an advancing age-profile and the shallowness of the reserve strength.

Were Job still around he wouldn't, on second thoughts, always be on the Canal End. Sometimes, he'd have been in the Dublin dugout over the last few years and other times on the Down bench in Casement Park and Newry.

But then there would have been those All-Ireland finals in 1991, 1994 and 1995 which - together with the goodness of God - would have persuaded him that it wasn't, after all, such a bad old world.