Proficient Australians in almost total control

Despite all the salivating, the World Cup Pool E match between Ireland and Australia served up an unexceptional dish. Ireland seemed as flat as unleavened bread, and the Wallabies needed only to come to the boil sporadically to record a strictly table d'hote win.

A capacity 48,000 Lansdowne Road, well stoked all week and again before the kick-off, had sung Amhran na bhFiann and even Ireland's Call once more with more feeling than for some time. They wanted to get into the game but Ireland were rarely able to give them any excuse to. Australia's control was almost total. By the end, their colourful travelling support could sing Waltzing Matilda unopposed, though even that sounded half-hearted.

Calmness oozing from every pore of this experienced team, the Wallabies monopolised the ball from the offset, giving a master class in how to silence a hostile home crowd. Quite why Ireland never got going can in the main be attributed to the efficiency of the Wallabies.

That was the best reason Donal Lenihan could come up with publicly afterwards, after both he and Warren Gatland had admitted the Irish players had seemed flat at the interval. Frustration over their inability to get into the game had been the prime cause, admitted Lenihan, leading to over-anxiousness in their play.

Nonetheless, there seemed to be other factors at work. Straining at the leash several days ago, perhaps the game almost came too late for them, and the intense training of earlier in the week left their legs looking a little jellyish.

The communication between Dion O'Cuinneagain (who was probably carrying the shoulder injury that reputedly had his arm in a sling on Thursday) and a hurried Tom Tierney was off; even the lineout ball wasn't of its normal quality. Whatever, come kick-off they couldn't quite get to the pitch of things.

You couldn't fault Ireland's courage or tackling, though by the end it had left them drained. If the truth be told, Ireland were never in with a shout, not for an instance. "I'm very disappointed with the performance," admitted Gatland.

"We were well beaten by a very good Australian side. The disappointing thing from our viewpoint is that we didn't fire a shot, we didn't really go out there and play. We weren't nearly as accurate as we needed to be, both in line-outs and other times around the field, and Australia were very accurate."

The defeat means that Ireland must now beat Romania next Friday evening in Donnybrook in order to advance to the knock-out stages, where they will then have to face the best third-placed side in the quarter-final play-offs at Lens on Wednesday week, October 20th.

On current standings, that would seem likely to be Canada, who have their Pool C whipping boys Namibia to come next Thursday. More ominously though, Manu Samoa are another contender for that best third-placed slot, as might be the other rib-ticklers from Tonga. Fingers crossed for Canada seems the best shout.

Were Ireland to win that game, they would then have to face the winners of the France-Fiji Pool C decider just four days later. It's a bigger task, but as Gatland conceded, goes with the territory if you don't win your pool, cheekily taunting a French journalist that it would be Fiji which awaits Ireland in the last eight.

Ireland emerged scarred if just about unscathed, Lenihan expecting David Humphreys (leg injury), Kevin Maggs (dazed but not concussed) and Malcolm O'Kelly and Trevor Brennan (who both required stitches) to recover in the next couple of days. After resting up today, the squad will train tomorrow, when the team to face Romania will also be named.

Australia meanwhile, though someway short of their own best, have effectively booked their passage into the quarter-finals. Most probably they'll face Wales at the Millennium Stadium, before potentially playing either South Africa or England in the semi-finals. Their walking wounded were John Eales (groin strain) and Phil Kearns, whose sprained foot required an x-ray last night.

Both camps were also clearly nervous about the potential for suspensions being issued to Toutai Kefu and Trevor Brennan following a bout of fisticuffs some eight minutes into the second half. At the behest of touch judge Brian Campsall, the ensuing penalty went to Australia, though television replays seemed to show Kefu throwing the first punch, and the Wallabies took that as proof of Kefu's relative innocence. But the indications from both camps were that neither of them would be citing the other.

Another bone of controversy came at the end of the first half, when Donal Lenihan could be seen talking to fourth official Jim Fleming, through whom he was questioning Clayton Thomas's interpretation of the rules whereby scrums would have to be uncontested while a third prop, Dan Crowley, was temporarily replacing substitute hooker Jeremy Paul. Gatland interpreted this as "a little bit of a cop-out by the Australians."

Alas and alack for the home crowd and team, it was about all they copped out of.