By Paul Keane

When the siege was eventually lifted, and Meath goalkeeper Billy Hogan finally got a kick-out away to a green jersey in the 60th minute, there was a collective exhale of breath around Croke Park.

Galway had just put 2-3 on the board in the space of four minutes. Three minutes and 25 seconds to be exact. Even the Galway supporters looked drained by the pace and ferocity of it all. Three points ahead now, high on adrenaline and fuelled by momentum, the game appeared to be heading in just one direction.

Towering substitute Conor Gray won a free for Meath from that kick-out though and played it to Ciaran Caulfield.

Not 30 seconds earlier, Caulfield had been powerless to prevent Matthew Thompson pirouetting away from him on the opposite side of the field and beginning a snaking, passing move that led to Galway’s second goal, expertly tucked away by Liam Silke.

Caulfield, after getting the pass from Gray after Hogan’s kick-out, fed Donal Keogan who took Daniel O’Flaherty for a run down the right channel before doubling back and finding Meath captain Eoghan Frayne on the loop for, in the circumstances, a thoroughly gutsy score.

Still, you fancied Galway, two points ahead with 10 minutes to go, 2-12 to 1-13. On one of the GAA podcasts earlier in the week, the point was made that after two narrow wins which followed a draw and a loss in the All-Ireland series, the Connacht champions looked like a team either waiting to lift off, or waiting to be put out of their misery.

We favoured the former at that stage of the game but, like a boomerang, Connor Gleeson’s subsequent kick-out was won by Meath and the ball was immediately arrowed straight back into the danger zone by Mathew Costello.

Jordan Morris – displaying all the predatory instincts of the 2001 version of Padraic Joyce, who hit Meath for 10 points in that season’s All-Ireland final – spun away from Jack Glynn and soccer-poked a shot that Gleeson tipped wide. It was Gleeson’s third big save of the game, having tipped a Sean Coffey shot over in the first-half, and denied Cathal Hickey with an outstretched foot in the third quarter.

Hogan put the 45 wide and Gleeson got a short kick-out away to O’Flaherty, but when he fed Johnny McGrath, Morris blindsided him and popped the ball out of his grasp, setting Meath away for their second goal.

Under the old rules, O’Flaherty or McGrath would have fisted a pass back to Gleeson, creating a plus-one to get them out of defence and back on the attack.

Pictured: Galway captain Sean Kelly in action last Sunday. Photos: Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile.