Ireland left flat-footed and humbled

International Rules / Australia 100 Ireland 64: By the end of the first quarter it was clear Ireland would be playing for self-respect for the remainder of this Fosters International Rules series.

Those first 20 minutes have always been Ireland's territory, the part of the game during which the Aussies grope around a bit before getting accustomed to where everything is. Not yesterday.

Yesterday the margin at the first break was 10 (15-25) and that was flattering for the visitors who at one stage approaching the end of the quarter actually had reduced the deficit to three before some proportion was restored and even that included a great save by Mickey McVeigh from Nick Davis.

Ireland were left flat-footed but empirically taken this was a sensational Australian display, breaking 100 points for the first time in series history, against a team that for all its inadequacies ran up 64 points, sufficient to win most of the previous Tests in the history of the series.

Yet Ireland had a good idea what was going to happen. The Australians would create a forcefield of energy around the middle, using all of their fliers to take the ball at pace and run attacks through the centre. To maintain the tempo they would interchange all the time to ensure the maximum voltage for these offensives.

Ireland started with Ciarán McDonald and Seán Cavanagh at centrefield and they were overrun by a succession of opponents: Australia's man of the match Luke Hodge, Chris Newman, Daniel Giansiracusa and the irrepressible captain, Andrew McLeod. McDonald was buzzed all the time and denied the space to live up to the advance billing last year's displays had created for him in Perth during the week. Choked into submission, his football wilted.

It was also known the Australians were far more comfortable kicking the round ball than their predecessors. In other words it would be vital to get tight early on and try to instil doubt in the home forwards. Instead Australia hit twice the number of overs and one third the number of behinds.

Eight Australians kicked more than one over throughout the match as against three Irish players. Apart from Benny Coulter who netted two well-taken goals, the Irish attack was pretty toothless. Captain Pádraic Joyce and Matty Forde managed four points between them; last year the totals for the two Tests were 19 and 17.

Ronan Clarke and Stephen O'Neill did well as debutants, both ending up with 11, and Seán Cavanagh - "the man who knocked back the Brisbane Lions", as the TV commentary relentlessly reminded its audience - came strongly into the final quarter. But overall the forwards were sluggish but they were feeding off scraps, hungrily contested ones at that. Brian McGuigan was about to pull the trigger in the 39th minute when caught from behind by Chris Newman's superb covering tackle. Dale Morris, a controversial selection in his rookie year, was a revelation in defence using his speed and marking ability to curb a succession of corner forwards from Owen Mulligan on.

But with no platform out the field there was little opportunity for Ireland to exert consistent pressure and the finishing was well short of clinical when chances did present themselves.

Whereas there was a revival in the final quarter, which yielded a narrow four-point win for Ireland, the match and the series were over by then.

The scale of Australia's domination in possession is told in the match statistics. Of the top eight possession winners, only one - Tom Kelly - was Irish. Kelly was unfortunate to be pole-axed by one of those challenges the Australians always seem to manage each series - ambiguous because it might pass muster in their own game but for all the implied confusion, one that Ireland's better players always seem more prone to having visited on them.

Had the Laoisman spent longer on the field he would presumably have bettered his total of 19 plays. Instead he left, gasping, right behind his assailant, Russell Robertson who had been yellow carded for what the locals call a "shirt front".

At the back Ireland added to their woes by indecision in the tackle and poor distribution of the ball. They rarely managed to stop the man in possession and it was commonplace to see the ball-carrier break more than one tackle on his way in.

Inaccurate use of the ball bedevilled the team. During one attack three successive clearances went straight back to opposing players. In goal McVeigh did the staple things well, commanded the high ball and brought off two good goal-saving stops. But at international level 50 per cent of a goalkeeper's duties comprise the safe dispatch of restarts and the ability to play as an extra defender. The Down goalkeeper wasn't able to do that.

The match moved irretrievably beyond Ireland in the 33rd minute when Andrew Lovett deftly touched a ball, sent in by Amon Buchanan on the left wing, into the Irish net to open a 20-point lead, 43-23.

As is often the case, the third quarter was the one in which the Australians drove home their advantage, winning by 30-7 to extend the final-quarter lead to 40. But for a bravura goal by Coulter - he demanded the ball from Clarke and rode the hard challenges before finishing emphatically - the visitors' total for the period would have been one, a behind by Eoin Brosnan.

Still Australia had the final word in the half when Chris Johnson cracked in a penalty on the stroke of 60 minutes after Anthony Lynch had been penalised for tugging Kepler Bradley's jersey.

The fourth-quarter revival was at least welcome, featuring a thumping goal from Cavanagh after some neat approach work on the ground. There were also yellow cards for Graham Canty and Chris Newman but for all the festiness, the scoreboard and its "Australia 100" glistened above the fray like a giant iceberg. Pete McGrath and his selectors had within the space of the previous couple of hours gone from building the Titanic to having seven days to organise its salvage.