Out of the chaos came Meath. The masters of attrition ground a deserved victory in yesterday's Bank of Ireland All-Ireland semi-final against Armagh at Croke Park after a grimly unattractive afternoon's football. Exciting the match may have been with goals, a sending-off and a comeback but exhilarating it wasn't.

With two thirds of the players frequently crammed between the 40s, it was claustrophobic stuff which occasionally threatened to spill over into ill-humour and in the first half did with a couple of players fortunate that referee Paddy Russell took no action.

To be fair to Meath they had the tactics of the game dictated by Armagh's selection and deployment. Furthermore, they had to cope with the loss through injury of main strike forward Ollie Murphy after only 22 minutes.

With John McDermott in magnificent form at centrefield they rallied, however. And under the baton of Trevor Giles, they turned the screw and will now play Cork in next month's All-Ireland final.

Armagh have to a large extent themselves to blame. They had worked the stripped-down forward line well in the first half and created enough space for two well-taken goals and a close-run thing for what would have been a third just before half-time.

But in the second half the complexion of the game changed and with Meath increasingly tying down the congested central sector, Armagh - after a barrage of early wides had demoralised them - persisted in leaving forwards stranded on the inside with virtually no serviceable ball.

Meath identified their second-half stranglehold as having been the vital factor in a win which looked a distant prospect at halftime.

For their part Armagh were incensed over the dismissal of full back Ger Reid going into the final quarter.

Dispassionately speaking, it's hard to sympathise. Reid tripped Graham Geraghty who was on his inside and having already been booked, he left Russell with little choice but to give him the line for a second bookable offence.

Reid's departure seemed to deflate Armagh further. He is a senior figure on the team and although perceived as vulnerable, is highly regarded for the spirit he brings to the defence. Both joint-manager Brian Canavan and captain Jarlath Burns attested to the scale of the loss afterwards.

Yet Reid was struggling on Graham Geraghty without paying the full price for his discomfort. From the second-half restart he was in particular trouble as the supply to Meath's pacy captain increased. Given that he was already on a yellow card, it was hard to understand why the Armagh bench didn't make a switch to get him out of danger, as the way he was going was almost certain to trigger a goal or a second bookable foul.

In some ways the sanction didn't assist Meath. An extra man when the middle third of the field looks like the Tokyo underground at rush-hour won't bring too much of an advantage and Justin McNulty was threatening to do a tighter marking job on Geraghty.

Psychologically, however, the sending-off lifted Meath as comprehensively as it depressed Armagh and within seconds the consequent free had been pointed by Giles to draw Meath level. The Leinster champions didn't look back thereafter and were facilitated in their undisrupted focus by Armagh's inability to add to their one second-half point, scored by Paddy McKeever in the 43rd minute.

The match had started with a terrifying tableau to illustrate the sort of afternoon we were all in for: Armagh's McKeever and Oisin McConville isolated on the inside and a four-man half-forward line. There were also personnel switches with only Burns and top-gun Diarmuid Marsden holding their selected positions.

This was hardly unexpected, but it caused Meath a little uncertainty at the back. John McEntee started at full forward and successfully brought Darren Fay off out the field, leaving McKeever and McConville on the inside with Cormac Murphy and Mark O'Reilly for company.

Initially the result was anarchy. As the crowd drifted hither and thither in the middle, little in the way of clear-cut chances were created. Meath found their range earlier and established a 0-3 to 0-1 lead in the first 11 minutes.

This was to prove misleading as a trend. Eventually Armagh began to find their way. They were holding their shape, such as it was, and getting back solidly behind the ball with Burns taking two fine catches off his own line in apparent emulation of his deep role in the Ulster final.

Kieran McGeeney was doing well in his battle with Giles, shadowing Meath's centre forward and generally frustrating him before Giles became the match's dominant figure in the second half.

Most tellingly it was in attack that the tactics began to have an impact. In the 15th minute, a perceptive ball was launched by McGeeney into the path of Marsden. Quiet enough up to that point, he latched onto the pass and swept in a goal to push Armagh ahead 1-1 to 0-3.

In the following 10 minutes the match seemed to turn against Meath.

Ollie Murphy, whose 1-5 from play against Dublin had marked him out as the team's inform forward, injured his knee going for a ball and had to be carried off, with Ray Magee replacing him in the 22nd minute.

Three minutes later a long ball out of Armagh's defence found McConville who placed overlapping wing back Kieran Hughes right in on goal and he took the chance well. It was maybe significant that Hughes's marker Nigel Nestor - the goal apart, a model of hard work - responded with a point almost immediately.

Between then and the interval Armagh looked good and the match picked up. Paddy McKeever slung over a couple of great points and Meath responded with Magee's first score the result of well-constructed approach work. Cormac Murphy slipped up and Marsden got in on goal but his shot went high for a point.

Of most long-term significance was Fay's switch back inside. Having been beguiled into playing away from his goal, to the detriment of the team, the full back was switched back into familiar territory and - almost unnoticed in the brief flurry of scoring - Meath got back their defensive shape.

The second half started badly for Reid. He had been just about holding his own up to the interval but now things were to get serious. He was beaten several times in the first few minutes and was lucky that Geraghty didn't make more of the opportunities.

During the whole third quarter the teams shared only two points between each other. But the match was tightening around Armagh with Giles starting to take control.

Observing Reid's difficulties, Meath's playmaker pumped ball after ball in on top of Geraghty and eventually the pressure told with the full back's dismissal.

Once Meath had caught up on the scoreboard, Armagh looked doomed. Their forlorn inside attackers eventually wearied of waiting for ball and went off to have a look for themselves - resulting in a moment of unintentional humour when a ball was driven into the full-forward line only to find four Meath defenders and no attackers.

Meath acknowledged afterwards that they made heavy weather of finishing the match. Three points ahead with six minutes to go, they squandered three clear-cut chances of scores and kept the match technically alive.

Eventually Evan Kelly, who had a lively and intelligent match, made the last attack pay by rightly ignoring Geraghty who was free on the inside and taking the insurance point in the 70th minute.