At times this enthralling match flared with more emotion than might be deemed proper for a pale November Sunday skirmish in the back yard of the champions. With three minutes remaining, Galway found themselves scrapping for pride alone, with Donegal seemingly on the cusp of an unlikely victory fashioned by a bunch of promising novices.

The overall flow of an encounter characterised by open football seemed to turn after Brendan Devenney cut through two defenders to clip Donegal's 12th point after 57 minutes. With Galway two down and struggling, those home fans in the lively 12,000 crowd seemed set to witness the first stumble after a summer of euphoric strides.

Think again. The economy and speed with which Galway scythed through their vistors serves to remind us of why they are champions. Ja Fallon bulldozed determinedly through to curl over a quick point after Pat Comer restarted. Then Ray Silke grabbed possession from the kick-out, the ball was fed to Padhraic Joyce through Paul Clancy and the full forward casually fired home the equaliser. All this in little over a minute. Donegal, exhausted after sustaining an admirable work rate over the hour, must have felt a chill as Sean O'Domhnaill prised possession from the centre-field tussle and lobbed a long ball for Derek Savage, who whipped a neat hand pass over the bar for the winner. The home fans exhaled the memories of the ordinary old days.

"It's nice. It's something that probably comes with getting a run of seven or eight games and then winning an All Ireland," said John O'Mahony afterwards, accounting for his team's stunning resurgence. "That's what winning is about. You still have to work and the lads did just that. We haven't trained yet and won't until the New Year, so this was a game we had to dig out. We got out of jail a little bit, we were lucky and Donegal were unlucky."

Few arguments from a crestfallen Declan Bonner, who nonetheless looks to have found some real prospects after his latest trawl for home talent. "It's tough to get nothing out of it, but we had chances in the last few minutes. We thought we were looking at a draw anyway. Ah, lack of experience maybe cost us and to be honest we were unhappy with some of the refereeing decisions. But we'll learn from this."

And in months to come, it's probably a chapter of the season they will leaf through a lot more frequently than the All-Ireland champions. Donegal found themselves trailing by 0-4 to 0-0 after 15 minutes, with Kevin Walsh and O Domhnaill dictating the break of ball and the Galway front six running all sorts of angles. Too often, the visitors' old dependency on the short ball and their tendency to over-elaborate hurt them. They began to assert themselves eventually through Jim McGuinness and Devenney, elbowing back into contention through a series of fine individual scores. From then on the match began to bubble, rising steadily in tempo as both teams seemed content to settle for an old style shoot-out.

That's a tough game to beat Galway at and the champions registered only two wides over the hour, both in the second half. Donegal spurned 11 chances, most of those arising from indecisive passing. But they acquitted themselves impressively; debut forward Michael Hegarty looked lively on the wing, newcomer Barry Ward dropped back to bolster mid-field while Adrian Sweeney and Noel Hegarty set a ferocious work ethic over the hour. Halfback Niall McCready underlined his worth after a marvellous dual with Michael Donnellan, which yielded the Dunmore man a single point.

Galway's John O'Mahony shuffled a new-look back line when the pace began to heat up a little, but not surprisingly, another Galway win resulted from the lightning transition playing from mid-field through to the front six. Afterwards, the faithful hung around the dressingrooms in huge numbers. "This time last year, there was no one here at all," grumbled the steward happily. All is well in never-never land.

Galway: P Comer; R Fahy, G Fahy, B Silke; K Fallon, D Mitchell, S de Paor; K Walsh, S O Domhnaill; P Clancy, S Walsh, M Donnellan, (0-1); D Savage (0-3), P Joyce (0-6, 2 frees), N Finnegan (0-2). Substitutes: F Gavin for K Walsh (19 mins), J Fallon (0-1), for S Walsh (40 mins), R Silke for D Mitchell (52 mins).

Donegal: P O'Callaghan; D Diver, R Sweeney, E Reddin; N McGinley, N Hegarty, N McCready; J Ruane, J McGuinness (0-3, 1 free); M Hegarty (0-1), A Sweeney (0-2), B Ward, B Roper (0-1), J Gildea (0-1), B Devaney (0-4). Substitutes: M Crossan for D Diver (43 mins), B McLaughlin for J Gildea (50 mins), S Carr for M Hegarty ( 58 mins)

Referee: M McCormac (Meath).