Sheedy looking forward to next week

When Kevin Sheedy exits the Australian dressingroom he has the look of a man who has just got something off his chest - in the true metaphoric sense. It's an hour since Australia surrendered their narrow lead over Ireland by trying to play down the clock and Sheedy has obviously told his team how stupid they were.

Still we'll build up slowly to that one. Disappointed Kevin? Can you make up for it? "That's what we're here to do, what we set out to achieve. Obviously we had the opportunity to win that game, and in the end we lost. But I thought there was a fantastic fighting spirit from both teams. And I think we left the fans happy that they came along. It's all highways to Dublin next Sunday.

"We'll learn a lot from that game. Well hopefully we will. But I think a lot of our players can show a high rate of improvement. And they've also got pride. They know they made one or two errors that allowed Ireland to get back into the game in the last few minutes. But full credit to them for doing them."

And so to the final two minutes - was that a tactic Australia should have been a little more careful about? "Of course we should. And they know that. You don't need to be Einstein to realise that. They're experienced enough to know. Two of those guys had just played in the Grand Final. So I think we should have played the ball down the flank, or back to Fletcher. We're still trying to get our players used to this game, but Ireland were terrific for the way they came back at us. They worked hard when they were tired, so if anything our first quarter probably cost us the game, not what happened in the last quarter.

"I just think it was more that so many of our players hadn't played the game before. As the game went on they did get better, and hopefully that will set them up for a terrific effort next week. We're disappointed to lose, but we're going to have an exciting week. Just get back into training and see if we can get better.

"But there's not much in it, is there, really? I know our players will have still got a lot of confidence out of that game, and aware of what they can do better. If you look back to where we were two years ago when we played here we've come a long way.

The Australians will spend the next few days combining some training and relaxation in Dromoland Castle, before travelling to Dublin on Wednesday and staging a full training session in Croke Park on Thursday.

Team captain and goalkeeper Dustin Fletcher - one of the better players on the day - shared his manager's views that Australia made some mistakes that they will learn from.

"Yeah, we're all very disappointed, having been up with a couple of minutes to go. But then we didn't start very well either, and we know we can improve there. So we're already looked forward to the next one.

"I think Ireland hit a lot more targets through the midfield, and they definitely came ready to play. But I think we can turn it around. We missed a lot of targets early on, and were very ordinary. We'll work on our kicking.

As a parting question Fletcher is asked if the stricter disciplinary rules somehow restricted their game: "Yeah, it's always in the back of your mind. If there's a fight in the AFL you're allowed to run in, but here the third man in is sent off.

"But in saying that I think we'll try to get back to the hard ball again, and I suppose in Dublin we'll try to play a tougher game, and do what we have to do to get over the line."