Brian McEniff's song of redemption. Almost exactly a year ago the GAA bid him organise an international team but declined to give him any real support, stripped him of his best players, allowed him field understrength and in so doing become the butt of Australian taunts. A year since he sat alone at the post-match banquet, mortified by failure as comprehensive as it was public.

Yesterday's victory in the first Test of the 2001 Fosters International Rules series comes as a remedy to such sharply remembered humiliation. So sharply remembered that the Irish manager says he hasn't slept properly since arriving because of the tension of it all.

"Last year I felt very sad for the people who appointed me and let down because we didn't perform and I didn't perform because I'm the manager and the buck rests with me. So I feel totally elated and free of that burden that I have carried for 12 months."

A year on and McEniff is in Melbourne, the MCG. The big-match build-up includes the ground's peculiar ability to fill by stealth. Players noted that the venue looked empty when they emerged into the night but by the time the match started, it looked thronged.

In fact it was somewhere between the two. Nearly 50,000 attended - down on two years ago by some 14,000 and down 20,000 on midweek predictions. But the famous walk-up crowd that gives big attendances without warning exercises less magic when the heavens open.

Before the match a loud and dazzling display of firework pyrotechnics amuse the small crowd as night falls with the floodlighting turned down. As the pall of smoke disperses we see that there is still hardly anyone present and also the reason. A curtain of drizzling rain is falling on the MCG, its squalling detail now lit up like perforations in the night sky.

A public show of support for deposed Dublin manager Tom Carr presumably reminds McEniff, if he gets to see it, of the disproportionate emotions triggered by men in his position.

It all finishes better than it starts for him. The fates that cackled derisively at him a year ago now whisper a little comfort. Two jammy goals deliver a six-point lead going into the concluding Test in Adelaide in six days' time. Anthony Tohill slips the first under the body of rookie goalkeeper Simon Goodwin and Kieran McGeeney effectively wins the day with a hopefully struck ball that baffles Goodwin's untutored sense of position.

McEniff's appreciates that this wasn't a five-star vindication. "At the beginning our handling was bad," he says. "We were second to the ball but at half-time I appealed to their spirit and guts. I expected more from seven or eight players who didn't really play at all in the first half. They upped it in the second half and gave me every drop of blood. It would rank next behind the All-Ireland in terms of achievement."

The player who gave most blood is the sutured corner-back Seβn Martin Lockhart. His own stitching in defence is one of the big contributions of the evening. Seβn Marty, 12,000 miles from the GAA venues of home, longs for an old, familiar melody.

"No one gave us a chance going into this. People were saying back home, 'the Aussies have caught onto this game now and they're going to beat you'. We were nervous in the first half and a wee bit too cautious at the start but we turned it around. It's on the day." Tadgh Kennelly with his dual citizenship of the Sydney Swans and Kerry makes for everyone the point about the bigger picture.

"We knew we had to get the respect back. We wanted to do well and make this thing work. The thing with the Irish is that they play games with their club and their county on the one weekend so it's match fitness they have. And that's what stood to them."

But their opponents aren't exactly dismayed. Only one score in it, someone reminds Australian coach Garry Lyon. "That's right. Game on here. I said to the boys, 'it's half-time' and you've a seven-day half-time break before you're out for the second half in Adelaide. We'll come at them again then."