Experience comes the hard way at end of long season

IRELAND TOUR: Australia 22 Ireland 15:THE IRELAND team which finished this game had five of the side which won the Churchill Cup 12 months ago. From Colorado to Brisbane, Ireland have completed a circuitous journey.

The record books will show a 24th successive defeat to the big three below the equator, but to come within a score of a Tri-Nations team in the Southern Hemisphere with what was essentially a Magners League pack, two weeks after shipping 66 points, wasn’t too shabby.

At one stoppage in the final quarter, Andrew Trimble was hobbling on the far wing, Shane Jennings was down and being treated, while Jonathan Sexton was having his knee strapped, which meant Geordan Murphy took the penalty to touch. For much of a pointless second half, they were running on empty.

With 13 players who had played in the previous nine Tests over the 2009-10 season ruled out, Declan Kidney sought to revive a flagging team with judicious use of the bench, and the introduction of Damien Varley and Rhys Ruddock took to 10 the number of debutants blooded this season (five on this tour), and to 40 the number of players used in those 10 games.

Forced to dip deeper, possibly, than any Irish side has done, over both the course of the tour and the season, it was to little avail.

Backed by a huge if different Irish support (booing opposing kickers, Ole, Ole, Ole giving way to an impassioned Fields of Athenrywhen the going was at its toughest in the second-half) only heroic defending, encapsulated by a typically defiant and brave piece of last-man-standing by Tomás O'Leary, kept them within a score.

“You can’t buy experience, so we gave experience to a number of fellas tonight, and the fact that we’re disappointed, does that say something?” said Kidney, for whom a third successive Test defeat (and fifth loss in a row) will leave a sour taste until November.

“I’m not trying to clutch at straws,” he added in reference to the one-score margin. “I’m as disappointed as anyone that we didn’t get the win, but you have to build up experience too and we have some now. And, when that experience will kick in I’m not sure, but we had to build it – there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we had to do that.”

For all the World Cup preparation, Kidney knows the team needs wins again. “It’s another handy one, South Africa in November,” he said of their next fixture. “But I’ve said it before, the more often we play these teams, the better we’ll get. I didn’t say we’d win them all, straight up. But the more often we play them, the more used we’ll get to be to playing them and the better we’ll become once we stay strong in our belief in what we do.”

There had been positives, not least much more alert re-alignment and line speed when defending quick ruck ball. There were glimpses of menace from a talented backline, but although the scrums and lineouts improved after rocky starts, they still couldn’t provide the backs with the kind of platform from which to test a vulnerable Aussie defence.

Also, as Kidney conceded, it’s hard to argue with a 2-0 try count here. Nor did Ireland create an abundance of chances. Their best move emanated from their first usable lineout ball of either Test, which was almost a half-hour in.

Niall Ronan gathered as an emergency, tail-of-the-line option, and Brian O’Driscoll – though standing flat – straightened through off Paddy Wallace’s pass as Australian defenders were fooled by the wraparound runners. Alas, he failed to pick out Tommy Bowe’s switch inside and instead passed wide to Trimble. It’s easier up in the stands, but that moment will probably annoy O’Driscoll as much as any of the utterly out-of-character four handling errors.

Drew Mitchell was at least penalised for pushing Trimble to the ground after tackling him into touch (why don’t more referees deal with this off-the-ball nonsense?) and Jonathan Sexton made it 12-8 at the time, but it could have been 16-8.

Given Ireland had coughed up a soft try when a laboured 8-9 blindside move off a scrum saw Luke Burgess score a 35-metre intercept try, it underlines how well Ireland were playing at that point.

But a touring side in the 44th week of a season on the other side of the world had to have something to defend, something to sustain them.

As it was, they deservedly led 15-11 coming up to half-time when, out of nothing, Quade Cooper went through an inviting gap between Shane Jennings and Niall Ronan. Championship minutes, as the Aussies say of the 10 minutes either side of the interval, and as usual it came down to a couple of key moments. Therein lies the lesson.

“But for the time being, every time you go out and represent your country you want to do the best you can and that’s why we’ll be disappointed,” Kidney said. “It was a game that was possibly there, got away from us.”

Typical of a match featuring some good moments but little of it sustained amid plenty of mistakes, Ireland will feel they should have gone in ahead, having butchered one well-created try-scoring opportunity while coughing up two soft ones at the other end. Against that, the Wallabies left seven points behind through their kickers.

Twice in the second half Ireland threatened to break out of their territory. Off another well-worked set-piece move, Rob Kearney’s pass slightly behind Bowe just forced the winger to check, and that was enough, while a lung-busting lineout drive was undone by Mick O’Driscoll’s knock-on. A pity, because he had dredged up a good performance.

Seán Cronin also performed impressively, as did Sexton, and Wallace had some creative touches. But those incidents apart, they rarely threatened to open the Wallabies up and they hadn’t the cohesion or skills under wearying pressure to keep the ball through sustained phases, and so the dangerous Bowe and Trimble were under-used.

But, as with the tour, they’re better finding this out than not knowing at all.

SCORING SEQUENCE:3 mins: Sexton pen 0-3; 10: Sexton pen 0-6; 13: Cooper pen 3-6; 18: Burgess try 8-6; 22: Sexton pen 8-9; 30: Sexton pen 8-12; 34: Cooper pen 11-12; 36: Sexton pen 11-15; 40 (+1): Cooper try 16-15; (half-time 16-15); 52: Giteau pen 19-15; 61: Giteau pen 22-15.

AUSTRALIA:J O'Connor (Western Force); D Mitchell (NSW Waratahs), R Horne (NSW Waratahs), M Giteau (ACT Brumbies), A Ashley-Cooper (ACT Brumbies); Q Cooper (Queensland Reds), L Burgess (NSW Waratahs); B Daley (Queensland Reds), S Faingaa (Queensland Reds), S Ma'afu (ACT Brumbies), D Mumm (NSW Waratahs), M Chisholm (ACT Brumbies), R Elsom (ACT Brumbies, capt), D Pocock (Western Force), R Brown (Western Force). Replacements: K Beale (NSW Waratahs) for Horne (half-time). J Slipper (Queensland Reds) for Daley (54 mins). Not used:H Edmonds (Brumbies), M Chapman (ACT Brumbies), M Hodgson (Western Force), J Valentine (ACT Brumbies), B Barnes (NSW Waratahs).

IRELAND:R Kearney (Leinster); T Bowe (Ospreys), B O'Driscoll (Leinster, capt), P Wallace (Ulster), A Trimble (Ulster); J Sexton (Leinster), T O'Leary (Munster); C Healy (Leinster), S Cronin (Connacht), T Buckley (Munster), D O'Callaghan (Munster), M O'Driscoll (Munster), N Ronan (Munster), S Jennings (Leinster), C Henry (Ulster). Replacements: T Court (Ulster) for Buckley (half-time), G Murphy (Leicester) for Kearney (53 mins), D Tuohy (Ulster) for O'Callaghan (53-54 mins), for O'Driscoll (70 mins), R Ruddock (Leinster) for Henry (69 mins), D Varley (Munster) for Cronin (70 mins). Not used:E Reddan (Leinster), R O'Gara (Munster).

Referee:Bryce Lawrence (New Zealand).