Engaging hybrid gets last chance

The arrival tonight of the Australian panel for the coming International Rules series sets the scene for the re-engagement of two of the world's great indigenous sports. Whereas the idea is now over 30 years old and would appear to any reasonable person a worthwhile idea, it hasn't attracted universal support in either hemisphere.

This Sunday's match and the following week's will be the first shots in a campaign to institutionalise International Rules over the coming years. The campaign will be based over four years with alternating series in Ireland and Australia between now and 2001.

As the series are fully organised and sponsored, they will constitute the last chance for the concept of International Rules to take root. If the game has a future, it will take wings after four years; if not, it will be extinct.

A brief guide to the perspective through which the game is viewed in both Ireland and Australia would have to make the point that the GAA has been more enthusiastic about the idea. Bombarded by the hype which attends international events such as Five Nations rugby and World Cup soccer, the Croke Park authorities decided that they needed an international outlet.

The series in 1984 and '87 (in Ireland) and '86 and '90 (in Australia) indicated that the market was more interested on this side of the world. Crowds of 30,000 attended tests in Croke Park whereas in 1986 the public was agog at the intemperate rantings of Aussie coach John Todd who branded the Irish team as "wimps" during an interview with Mick Dunne on Morning Ireland. The country came to a standstill on a Friday morning that November when live coverage from Adelaide of the decisive, third test was broadcast by RTE.

Four years later, there was considerable bad blood between Montrose and Croke Park at RTE's refusal to carry anything more extensive than highlights flown across the world by carrier pigeon and broadcast the following week.

Yet the problem was always a reluctance on the part of the Australians to engage fully with the project. The presence of the round ball has always apparently prejudiced Australian Rules devotees who regard the sphere as reminiscent of soccer, a game regarded - with a distaste that has often echoed the attitude of fior Gaeil in the GAA - as effete.

As a result, International Rules wasn't marketed as such in Australia. A trial match between Ireland and Australia - a week before the first test - in Albery eight years ago was advertised as Aussie Rules stars playing Gaelic Football.

Consequently public interest was fairly small. Irish expatriates made up the bulk of the crowd and without the bona fide interest of Australia, the international concept looked doomed.

Croke Park authorities always felt that their Australian counterparts were more interested in pursuing the same path as American football: exhibition matches and worldwide television exposure for an undiluted version of their game. Until that aspiration was shown to be an inadequate realisation of the international vision, the GAA waited.

There were cultural differences between the games. Institutionalised scatters in Australian Rules could transfer to the international game and one of the thrills of the 1984 series was the parade-ground precision with which the visiting replacements' bench invaded the pitch at Croke Park to get involved in a brawl during the third test.

Matters became more heated in Australia two years later and the behaviour of the Irish players was portrayed as less than manly after incidents in which they fell over after being hit. (Apparently, you had to remain standing after being assaulted in order to retain the respect of the hosts). Needless to say, the Irish visitors got into the swing of things and International Rules looked to have become a contained version of war.

In fairness to the Australians, their behaviour in 1984 was largely a by-product of their inability to cope with the restrictions on the tackle. In consequence they resorted to professional fouling and set a saturnine precedent for the 1986 series in Australia.

Eugene McGee - the only man to have managed Ireland twice - realised on taking over in 1987 that the only future for the game was one in which assault-and-battery was kept to a minimum. His more restrained vision combined with a similar approach by the Australian coaches, Neil Kerley and David Parkin respectively, to preserve International Rules as a viable game in both 1987 and '90.

Australians see the experiment as being one where they make more compromises than the Irish. This view principally concerns the use of a round ball. It was decided originally that the regulation GAA ball would be best used because Australian players are at least familiar with soccer and basketball and could adapt to such a ball quicker than the Irish could master an oval ball.

Whereas this is undoubtedly true and the bounce of a round ball is easier to adapt to than the erratic behaviour of an oval one, it was notable in Australia eight years ago that Irish players were intrigued at the prospect of playing with an Australian Rules ball.

This came to light particularly after the second test in which Ireland had trimmed the hosts so comprehensively (52-31 - not the biggest margin in the history of the series, but the only time a series was killed off in two matches) as to cast a doubt on the future of the game.

Eugene McGee, with characteristic bluntness, told reporters: "The Aussies played badly anyway and it wasn't our job to make them play well . . . It (using an oval ball in the third match) would help in the long term, but I won't be in charge if or when the next series takes place. We would have won the match with a square ball."

The Australian view of International Rules as `Gaelic football with a tackle' is misleading because the tackle - or lack of it - is one of the things which most frequently bedevils Gaelic football. Although it mightn't appear like much of a concession, the implications of using the ball or losing it are severe for players accustomed to weighing up the options.

It was obvious during the junior match at Croke Park last April that the lack of time allowed on the ball is one of the major adaptations which Irish players have to make. Attitudes to physical and excessively physical play are also different. Whereas straightforward brawling is more a feature of Aussie Rules, Australians find what they see as sneakier devices - such as indiscriminate use of the elbow which frequently goes unpunished in football - more distasteful.

However it all pans out over the weekends ahead, the hope has to be that International Rules has a future. Players genuinely enjoyed the experience of being part of an international set-up and the game itself can be exhilarating once a natural self-consciousness recedes and the football flows.