subst question

[Brendan Heading]

All, 

Another quick question. Does anyone know a way in GNU Make to filter off the 
first instance only of a given string. 

For example, at the moment I'm doing 

$(subst lib,,libfoo.a) 

which gives me "foo.a". However if I do : 

$(subst lib,,libbarlib.a) 

this also gives me "bar.a" even though what I need is "barlib.a". 

Any ideas ? 

Regards 

Brendan