Gaelic football skills foxed Aussies

Payback time in Adelaide. No slight, however trivial, has gone unavenged. The Irish dressing-room whoops in unison and smaller, more individualistic acts of celebration are performed as late arrivals brush past the barrier and into the visiting team's quarters.

Paddy Clarke, the selector banished to the stands after his altercation with a match official the previous week, stops and shakes a fist. No need to ponder too long what thoughts race through his head. In the dressing-room he raucously offers: "The red mist is on me tonight lads" - a reference to his ingenious if unavailing plea of mitigation before last Monday's tribunal.

His co-selector, John O'Keeffe, explains the improved staying power and tactical thinking behind this hugely impressive win.

"The ability to stay the pace. We had greater strength in depth and everyone pulled their weight. The nail in the coffin for Australia was that our forwards clicked playing Gaelic football. That stunned them, particularly the jinking runs of the likes of Pβdraic Joyce and Geraghty; they weren't able to cope.

"We knew we had the pace, the sidesteps and the accuracy. We felt we had it over them on the ground, soccer-style, even if it didn't work particularly well in the first Test, but it was a deliberate tactic on our part. This has been the most comprehensive win and to do it in Australia with the spirit between squad and management, it's particularly satisfying.

"I feel the Australians are still searching for the right blend and the right sort of player. We were much stronger and better prepared. There were some great passages of play tonight and it can only get better. We need to improve on our junior sides at under-17 level."

Playing straightforward football was an obvious approach in the view of one man who's seen both football codes at close quarters. Tadhg Kennelly enjoyed a fantastic night, ending up top scorer with five overs. "We talked about it when we came in at quarter-time. It doesn't have to be a mark ball with the players we've got. We're quick in the hips. You saw Joyce, Crowley and Devenney turn them. Hop ball - that's the way we play. Why change it?"

Top of the list for changing is the "Sure 'twill do" motto for the home series in Dublin. Already this week GAA president Seβn McCague has intimated he hopes to overhaul preparations for the home tests. Darren Fay, named with little contention Ireland's man of the series, has experienced all four series since 1998. "It's an awful lot easier to play away from home because you're always together and I think the GAA will have to look at something. Playing on a Sunday with lads having to get up for work at eight o'clock on a Monday morning isn't on."

The point gets immediate reinforcement from Seamus Moynihan, the Kerry maestro: "There's no point players playing in the county the day before you play Australia. You're playing 80 minutes of intense football and if you're not going to give it 100 per cent, there's no point in doing it at all because the Australians will come and they'll wipe you."

There'll be plenty to wipe for the Aussies next year. New coach Garry Lyon did his best to explain the latest calamity to befall a home side in the series.

"We hit them hard and loosened them up and there were signs that the pressure was telling. But to their credit they regrouped and the way they played in the second half was pretty impressive.

"We've got a lot of work to do, the bar's been raised. I've watched all the games from last year on more than one occasion and the difference between Ireland then and now is poles apart. That's the challenge for us, to lift our game. So we'll go away licking our wounds and see what we can come up with."