Series gains go to the most serious panel

The only generalisation you can make about the International Rules project is that you shouldn't generalise. Attempts to extract long-term meaning from the annual series have been constantly thwarted. At the end of an unexpectedly successful tour by Ireland, the strongest opinion an observer can credibly make is that the more serious panel wins.

Former Australian coach Dermott Brereton's assertions 12 months ago - that his country's professional footballers were always going to make their standards of fitness pay off against Irish amateurs - now look curiously outdated.

Anyone familiar with International Rules identified 12 months ago that the amateurism afflicting Ireland had nothing to do with the players' fitness. The fault lay with the astonishingly negligent administration of the series by GAA officialdom, from county boards to Croke Park.

Comments made by GAA president Sean McCague during the announcement of the series' extension to 2005 are significant in that respect. McCague said that the GAA calendar would be cleared for the two weekends in question and that if management and players wanted, a full-time training camp would be organised, probably between the first and second Tests.

If implemented this will have a fundamental impact on Ireland's future home series. The ludicrous spectacle of players getting injured in club matches two days before they're supposed to represent their country can, it is hoped, be reclassified as history rather than custom.

Whether such an approach can redress the growing discrepancy between home and travelling teams remains to be seen. The contrast was again visible this year. It's asking a lot of professional players to give up over a week of their close season without the added lure of a two-week trip and the Australian panel for this series was the weakest we've seen, judged on star quality.

Captain Craig Bradley was at pains to explain that the players who hadn't involved themselves had been dealing with injuries but for whatever reason, the absentee list was extensive. Nathan Buckley, James Hird (both former captains and Players of the Series), the suspended Jason Akermanis (Player of the Series two years ago and this year's Brownlow medallist) and Michael Voss (Brisbane's driving force in the Premiership) were all unavailable.

Despite their advantage in terms of a deeper pool of talent, Australia can't sustain such a haemorrhage of proven players.

Ireland's performances may well be viewed as a watershed should the series go on to establish itself in the long term. Last Friday's second Test in Adelaide showcased the first radical tactical innovation since the international concept was revived.

The decision to make no attacking concession to the international game and to concentrate on methods familiar to Gaelic footballers, including playing the ball on the ground, soccer-style, was well judged and proved most effective.

The series victory was a triumph for Ireland manager Brian McEniff. His experience symbolises a nagging problem built into the current system. This has seen the management teams in both countries staggered so that each new manager faces an opponent travelling with a year's experience. There may not be a lot that can be done about this but at the moment it appears to exacerbate the differences appreciable in the home-and-away cycle.

McEniff knew plenty about the downward part of that cycle after last year's fiasco and applied the lessons well. His choice of personnel was largely vindicated with fellow Donegal man Brendan Devenney confounding suspicions of favouritism by emerging as Ireland's top scorer and Armagh's Kieran McGeeney dismissing reservations about his pace to deliver monumental defensive displays - as well as chipping a goalkeeper from 50 metres.

The Ireland manager suffered a great deal last year after the team he was left with proved patently incapable of competing. As someone who had coveted the international appointment for a while, he was embarrassed and by his own account, ashamed. Nonetheless he bore the setback with courtesy and good humour. Anyone who has had dealings with him over the two years of his appointment couldn't fail to be pleased with his personal success and impressed with his assured handling of the tour. (He even recovered ground in relation to the Melbourne controversy and prevented it getting out of hand).

The manner of victory wasn't too surprising either. The notes of truculence that marked the post-match disturbances in Melbourne might have appeared at odds with McEniff's soft-spoken demeanour and careful cultivation of consensus. But 17 years ago when the first International Rules tour brought the Australians to Ireland, the schedule included provincial warm-ups.

Then as now, McEniff was in charge of Ulster who became the only province to win a match. They did so against a side that resembled WWF wrestlers playing for keeps. At no stage on a notoriously violent tour were the Australians targeted so aggressively.

His teams may be characterised by good footballing instincts but McEniff also knows what it takes.

To an extent that aspect represented the only downside of the tour. Since those scabrous days of the mid-1980s the pendulum has swung. In the past the GAA has striven to eliminate the bar-room brawling that endangered the international game . And it has been eliminated but GAA officials have been a little vexed that such gamesmanship as took place came from the Irish.

The incidents in Melbourne and Paddy Clarke's suspension were bad enough but were accompanied by some disingenuous myth making. The claim that back home, manhandling a referee isn't such a big deal embarrassed the GAA and it was left to a player, Dermot Early, to emphasise that this was not acceptable practice in Gaelic games.

The hostility to Australian umpire Brett Allen appears to have arisen last year because of what the Irish felt was the inadequate protection given to players in general and Peter Canavan in particular. Nonetheless this was no excuse and didn't establish any equivalence with what happened this month.

No organised sport can afford not to punish interference with match officials far more heavily than it punishes violence between players. With the latter, a game is demeaned; with the former there is no game.

Viewed objectively, the standard of officiating has improved and will improve further next year. The ill-advised billeting of referee Pat McEnaney with the Irish team was a regressive arrangement given that his predecessor Michael Curley had stayed in a separate hotel.

McEnaney was excellent but he too accepts that for appearances' sake the procedure will have to revert.

It is likely that the Australian and Irish officials will stay together in future and each take charge of the others' training sessions. Failing this having the desired effect there may be the revival of an old notion that neutral referees be recruited from Rugby League and trained.

Whatever course is taken, the game can't again afford such distrust and open hostility to form the attitude of one team towards the other country's official.

So what is the game's future at this stage, four years into the initial period of resumption? The quality hasn't matched the standard set in the inaugural series of 1998, although last Friday's second Test had its moments. Everyone would like to see a match between two teams, both on their game, but we haven't had that for two years.

Crowds of 50,000 and 31,000 were down this year compared with 1999. Factors such as the rain in Melbourne and petrol rationing in Adelaide (due to an industrial dispute) help explain the drop but it represents a cumulative fall of 30,000 between the venues and will create a little apprehension ahead of the return trip in 2003.

One of the more thoughtful Irish players said that he felt there wasn't quite the same edge to this series as had existed two years ago. If that turns out to be a trend, the AFL will have a struggle to continue to sell the hybrid game in Australia, where local media remains to be fully sold on the idea.

What can be said is that International Rules has grown impressively in four years. Australia will bring a renewed sense of purpose to Ireland with them next October and the show will go on. The long-term success of the project hasn't been guaranteed but any fears of short-term failure have been comfortably averted.