GAELIC GAMES: There's been another cruel and unusual realignment of the Leinster football championship.

The holders have been sent crashing, the favourites have miraculously survived, and in the end the team that left the greatest impression on Croke Park was the one luckiest just to be there.

While it's not entirely surprising that Westmeath have failed to regenerate their immense momentum of last year, their defeat had a few twists nonetheless. In part two of yesterday's quarter-final double bill, they saw their title gradually slip away after Kildare produced a performance best described as a renaissance - and won it 0-14 to 0-11.

And that was mostly 14-man Kildare, who lost forward Ronan Sweeney to a second yellow card on 20 minutes, having just two weeks ago barely sneaked past Wicklow.

It was a dramatic transformation for a team still known for its chameleon instincts.

So Westmeath's disappointment will linger, not just because they've lost their first Leinster title at the first hurdle. They'll know too they had Kildare in the unenviable position of being a man down in the early stages and at a time when the champions were playing the better football.

Yet whatever feelings of regret Westmeath might harbour, they must surely pale in comparison to Offaly's. They had Laois on the run for long and arduous periods of their quarter-final, a game Offaly were fancied to contest, but not to win. Then, with half of the allotted injury time expired, Laois forward Ross Munnelly collected a breaking ball in the Offaly box and inflicted the ultimate punishment on the opposition - the late, match-winning goal. Laois won it 1-10 to 1-8.

That was probably the moment that will stick longest in the minds of yesterday's audience of 35,485.

Laois manager Mick O'Dwyer won't soon forget it either, even if he's seen all that and more several times over. His team will meet Kildare in the semi-final.

"Any football that was played in the first half was played by Offaly," admitted O'Dwyer. "So I'm delighted that we got out of jail, and we're in the Leinster semi-final.

"But that will do us all the good in the world, because we did start to play in the second half. And who cares what way we got the goal, or who was winning, or who had all the play? We don't give a s**te. We won the game, and that was it."

Offaly didn't play as if they'd planned to quietly ambush their old rivals. It was a full-frontal assault, over the top, and a charge. They played with the alertness of a wild animal, but what ultimately sealed their fate was an inexcusable excess of wayward shooting. They had 20 wides at the finish and any number of those should have gone between the posts.

"The wides finished us, obviously," said manager Kevin Kilmurray. "If you can't convert your efforts into scores it's a huge disadvantage. We didn't do that. Yeah, 20 wides, and when you do that you're going to pay the penalty."

Kilmurray wasn't the only manager asked to explain the unexplainable. Pádraig Nolan was quickly surrounded after Kildare had beaten the Leinster champions despite being a man down for so long.

"Well, it came down to everybody," he said, "all 35 members of this panel. It just doesn't happen with 14 men. It was just a case of getting out there and think workrate, workrate, workrate.

"There'll always be parts of the game that will go against you, and it wasn't going for us in the first 10 minutes. But we got down and dominated midfield, and probably dominated there for most of the match."

Down the other end of the Hogan Stand tunnels, Páidí Ó Sé was asked to explain why his team played so much of the game with an extra man but didn't utilise him.

"I know," he said, "but sure Offaly had an extra man last year against us and it didn't work out for them either. That's not the first time it has worked to the advantage of the team that was short a man. It might mean that they work harder."

Ó Sé's more pressing concern is how to rise his team again.

"We won't address it this evening. We'll give the lads a bit of an opportunity to find themselves, and realise what position they're in.

"But they're not the only team tonight in that position. Offaly are there too, and a few more around the county. Sure, you never know, we might be able to bounce back."

It's 10 years since a team retained the Leinster title - Dublin it was in 1995 - so that trend will run for another year at least.

Despite all this, the Leinster championship is only marginally less open than it was at the start of summer. Next Sunday Dublin are back at headquarters to play their old rivals Meath, and another potential realignment of the championship awaits.