Ireland can feel satisfied with tour

Before this two-Test tour to New Zealand, two truly competitive matches with the All Blacks and a couple of two-score defeats would have seemed a very good return; all the more so before Saturday's second Test in Eden Park and particularly when Ireland trailed 17-0. Now, though, it seems more a case of a lost opportunity.

Clearly the players are of a similar mind. A near-crestfallen Denis Leamy summed up the bitterly disappointed mood in the Irish camp when endeavouring to look forward to the last game of a rollercoaster season for Irish rugby in Perth next Saturday.

"Getting a win was always the main objective coming out here and, hopefully, that's not too far away. It all comes down now to this one-off game at the end of the season. We've just got to keep the focus on. It's a great opportunity to make it a good end-of-season tour. We definitely have to believe from now on that we can do that. It's just that five per cent mentally. We've got to start really believing that we can do it," said Leamy. "Sometimes, possibly, a little bit of doubt crept into our game and that was maybe the difference between winning and losing, last week especially."

All in all, it appears to have been a pretty relaxed and enjoyable tour, coach Eddie O'Sullivan clearly learning lessons from the past, most notably the relatively hectic trek to South Africa two summers ago. By and large, the management staff can feel pretty satisfied with their work.

The first Test especially reinforced the feeling that O'Sullivan needs to be more proactive than reactive with his bench, and for that to happen he needs to develop more strength in depth. With that in mind, some changes to play Australia might or might not sacrifice short-term goals but would assuredly serve longer-term aims.

If not Jeremy Staunton, who is going to be developed as an alternative number 10? Geordan Murphy? One of the ripple effects of that policy is Murphy himself cannot be taken off in case anything should happen to O'Gara.

O'Sullivan had no stated leaning toward his selection policy for this game and will await updated injury reports. The likeliest change could see Girvan Dempsey come into the back three in place of Andrew Trimble, or perhaps Denis Hickie, but it would be no surprise if there were no changes at all.

By contrast, the newly installed Australian coach, John Connolly, is expected to make a few alterations to the side that beat England 43-18 in Melbourne and could again change his entire front row. Connolly believes Ireland will present a much tougher challenge than England.

Not for the first time, an All Black player avoided censure in the fall-out from Saturday's second Test amid complaints from the Irish camp that a video of the game, complete with all of Sky's camera angles, was not provided to the citing commissioner, Peter Brown of Scotland.

This followed an incident in the last quarter of the All Blacks' 27-17 win that left Shane Horgan requiring stitches to a wound above his left eye, which may or may not have been the product of Joe Rokocoko's boot, be it accidental or otherwise.

O'Sullivan claimed afterwards that Sky did not make a tape of the game available to Brown partly as "punishment" for the Irish management refusing them camera access to the dressingroom and also for Brian O'Driscoll refusing to conduct a post-match pitchside interview.

"It is a very unacceptable situation. That was an entertainment issue but this is a citing issue and that has to be looked at," said O'Sullivan, who added: "I've never seen this happen before in my life."

Curiously too, especially for an evening kick-off that finishes at almost 9.30pm local, there was only a 12-hour window for citing and although Brown did receive a tape of the game, unsurprisingly the All Black winger was not cited.