Second acts. Sequels. Reruns. Déjà vu all over again. You pays your money, you picks your cliché. Dublin and Meath resumed their generations old tango in drizzle-veiled Croke Park yesterday and once again found it hard to end their embrace when the music stopped.
A draw, both lucrative and sentimental, was the outcome and the 78,002 paying customers left to join for the clamour for tickets for the replay in a fortnight's time when both sides will be hoping for better weather, better fortune and, perhaps, an end to the affair.
It is 16 years now since the counties fought out an epic series of four games in Croke Park at a similar stage of the Leinster football championship. Meath's reputation for being the men they couldn't hang was founded on that series. Yesterday they left it late again. Cian Ward, a young substitute introduced in the second half to dazzling effect, had a sideline ball at a difficult angle some 14 yards out on the left wing with the game entering injury time. Ward declined to worry about who would be to bless or to blame afterwards and drove the ball straight between the posts to leave his side with 14 points to Dublin's 1-11.
Are Meath back, we asked selector Dudley Farrell afterwards. "We're not there yet," he said amiably. "We're getting there slowly. Like Iarnród Éireann."
Dublin, who have made the surrendering of decent leads something of a trademark in recent seasons, were content enough to have escaped with another chance. "Well, we weren't beaten so we have to temper the disappointment," said Paul "Pillar" Caffrey, the Dublin manager. "It may be the start of a renewed rivalry between Dublin and Meath."
For the sake of a football championship which so far has been long on talk and short of excitement that would be no bad thing.