HOLDERS MONAGHAN were held to a draw by old rivals Waterford in a pulsating women's National League senior final at Duggan Park, Ballinasloe, yesterday.

The encounter was always keen and a point just before the interval from Claire Ryan put Waterford in front at half-time, when the score read 0-9 to 2-2.

This tie saw vital points from Ryan and Mary O'Donnell in injury time for Waterford which ensured a draw as Monaghan had led the clash going into the final minutes.

Heroine for the Ulster women on the day was 15-year-old right corner forward Edel Byrne with her colleague Niamh Kindlan in support.

TWO OF Tyrone's top clubs have been withdrawn from the Division One league following a free-for-all during a senior championship game at the weekend. Dungannon and Edendork have had their fixtures suspended indefinitely as a result of a brawl during their first-round replay at Clogher.

Peter Kennedy, the secretary of the Tyrone games administration committee, stressed that neither club had been suspended, but it was thought appropriate that neither should be involved in competitive action until the matter was fully investigated by the county board.

Nor will they forfeit league points during their period of inactivity. The county board is due to meet tomorrow night when it will receive the report of match referee Paddy O'Brien.

Friday night's brawl erupted moments after Dungannon's Gerard Cavlan had been sent off. When order was restored, the referee dismissed four Edendork players. He appeared to be in the process of handing out similar punishment to four members of the Dungannon team, but following lengthy remonstrations with at least two of their players, he signalled that the game was to be abandoned.

The scenes were reminiscent of the now infamous league final last December which saw violent clashes between Carrickmore and Errigal Ciaran players. Now the Tyrone county board is again faced with a task it had hoped had passed into history.

IN A low-key Meath dressingroom, wing back Colm Coyle, veteran, it would seem, of a thousand tight struggles, was happy enough to have survived despite a moderate team performance.

"I suppose we're lucky to still be in it," he said. "It was one of those days that everything seemed to be going wrong for us. We drew level with them but we could never get ahead of them. So, relieved that we're still in it."

The Kildare midfielder Niall Buckley had a chance right at the end to put them one point in front. "I think if that 45 had gone over, the ref would have blown the final whistle," Coyle said. "He didn't play a lot of injury time, I thought there was another three or four minutes. I had asked him and he didn't confirm how long was left, he just said there's not a lot, so I had visions of it going over, but thankfully it dropped short."

Meath had missed a lot of chances, which Coyle attributed to some over- ambitious efforts from difficult positions. "We were trying to kick points from impossible angles. Kildare crowded their defence. We didn't play with cool heads, we were snapping at the ball. I suppose if a few of those long- range shots had gone over it would have looked great but, having said that, they missed three or four easy chances at the very end from 30 yards out so I think it would have been unfair for either team to lose.

"We knew it was going to be a tough battle. Kildare are probably a more experienced team than we are, which is strange to say, but they actually are, the bones of that team is around for five years or so." But Meath, as ever, survived. "It didn't look like we would but we did. So we live to fight another day, thank God!"

Despite his close brush with defeat, Meath manager Sean Boylan was in chirpy form. They had been chasing the game from the very start and were glad to hang on in the end.

"We were chasing it in all quarters," he said. "They got a great goal at the start of the match and from then on they played with great authority and conviction. They never flinched for a moment, never, allowed us to dictate the game at any stage, and normally in most games you get a chance at some stage, but we never got that today.

Kildare consistently put them under pressure, he added, which was why they kicked so many wides. He was glad to hear the final whistle - Meath had never looked like winning the game.

Did Kildare's dominance woriy him for the next match? "Ah no," he replied with a knowing chuckle, "we're still All-Ireland champions, we didn't get there without being able to play football! It's still there to play for, we survived despite all, and we'll have another go at it.

"The pace of the game was incredible," added Boylan. "Both teams were very fit and very much up for it. It was just so hard to try and get any sort of authority on the game. We couldn't do that, they never let us. We got three points after half-time but they came back and got two more points. There's very little you can do when that happens. They're two very evenly-balanced teams both of us will have it all to do to qualify to play Offaly."

The loss of wing back Nigel Nestor at half-time was a setback. "He did his elbow very early on in the match, he was having a fantastic game but the chap was in agony, he couldn't play."

Boylan was looking forward to the replay. "Yeah, delighted to have another go at it. We thought there was some great football in it and it took two good sides to produce it. Kildare have been underestimated, but if you consider what they did to Laois with 13 men, any sort of ... problems that they would ever have at a mental level, they buried that for good and for all the last day. That's a very good thing for them as a bunch of lads because they've striven very hard to try and bring honours to the county and if they beat us, well, well and good."

Corner back Mark O'Reilly polished off an energy drink and reiterated the bottom line: "We're still there, we're still All-Ireland champions. But we're going to have it every bit as tough the next day and we've a lot of work to do if we hope to beat Kildare. So it's back down to the hard work."

Like Boylan, he attributed much of Meath's wastefulness to the Kildare defending. "We had a lot of chances but most of them were under pressure. Kildare marked very tightly at the back and gave our forwards nothing easy." They also, he said, put the Meath defence under "an awful lot of pressure" by running at them continuously.

"They had us in trouble at different stages of the game but we kept plugging away and, thankfully, Trevor (Giles) put over a good point to get the draw for us. Something had to go right for us, they were getting all the breaks, the luck seemed to be going their way. It looked bad at different times during the second half, but we just stuck in there."

Kildare's early goal and a point had left them chasing the game for the rest of the afternoon. "It was a terrible start. We were four points down and the game had hardly started. We came into it a bit then in the first and did well to weather the (early storm. We got a few early scores in the second half, Graham (Geraghty) had the beating of his man and he was probably our best player today."

There was no panic in the dressingroom at half-time, just a degree of concem. "We were a small bit worried but I knew we still hadn't got going. We were kind of coming and going, stopping and starting. I always felt we were still going to be there at the end but in the end we were very lucky to be there."