Team on last legs needs fresh legs for final leg

NEW ZEALAND v IRELAND:THE IRISH squad awoke, ironically, to a glorious sun-kissed Sunday in Wellington before a mid-afternoon four-hour flight to a scarcely warmer climate on arrival in Melbourne. Presuming none of them are still suffering from hypothermia, they thus began the countdown to what is, for the core of the squad, the 53rd and final week of a season that ought really have been sponsored by Duracell.

Careful player-management and a low injury profile save for the midfield have made light of this mother of all marathons, but as countless end-of-season tours have shown, players are only human, and after this of all seasons it would be understandable if minds had started to wander.

It is not as if caretaker coach Michael Bradley, along with Niall O'Donovan, Graham Steadman and manager Joey Miles, don't have plenty of options.

In keeping with recent and time-honoured custom, Bradley's one-game-at-a-time philosophy is understandable but hints strongly at little in the way of rotation, which, precedents show, very often leads to a bridge too far.

Take the professional era alone. In 1998, having lost 37-13 in Bloemfontein, an unchanged Ireland side went down 33-0 in the Battle of Pretoria. Admittedly, in 1999 Ireland broke with custom by rebounding from a 46-10 defeat in Brisbane to nearly beat the Wallabies 32-26 a week later in Perth - though, perhaps significantly, Warren Gatland did make four changes.

A year on, Ireland lost in Argentina and rotated the squad for a record 83-3 win over the USA Eagles but reverted to a first-choice selection for the concluding tour match in Toronto and were indebted to a late Ronan O'Gara penalty for a draw.

Gatland subsequently admitted it was perhaps too big an ask of the Munster players.

In 2002, soon after another Heineken Cup final defeat for Munster, Ireland lost 15-6 in Dunedin. Eddie O'Sullivan made only one, injury-enforced, change and a week later they lost 40-8 in Auckland.

About the only exception to the trend occurred in 2004, when an Ireland team showing only two changes recovered from a 31-17 defeat in the first Test to South Africa to lose the second 26-17.

That too had come at the end of a long World Cup season, but Ireland had won four games to finish second in the Six Nations, no province had reached the European semi-finals and, whereas the first game had been on the high veldt of Bloemfontein, the second was in Cape Town.

Perhaps most salient of all, just two years ago, following Munster's first Heineken Cup win, a 30-man squad travelled on to Perth from 11- and 10-point defeats in New Zealand. O'Sullivan made only one change, dropping Geordan Murphy for Girvan Dempsey, and Ireland collapsed in the final half-hour to lose 37-15.

O'Sullivan bridled at questions of selection "policy" by asking who should he drop. But, clearly, those who ignore the mistakes of the past are apt to repeat them.

While Paul O'Connell and Brian O'Driscoll are still going strong after injury-interrupted campaigns and remain hugely influential, the likes of Peter Stringer, Luke Fitzgerald, Rory Best, Tony Buckley and Geordan Murphy might all provide a fresher impetus. Scotland's defeat in Argentina has reduced the heat a tad vis-à-vis a top-eight ranking for the World Cup draw in December.

Bradley said he and his staff would assess the state of the players' bodies over the next day or two, though as important might be the state of their minds. While one tilt at the All Blacks might have galvanised tired minds and bodies, one has to wonder if an infusion of fresh faces might not better suit this week's tilt at the Aussies.

Bradley conceded Saturday's Test "was a very good opportunity for us and we didn't take it" and added: "The effort was fantastic with very little reward. As a coach, I'm very proud of the performance and very disappointed with the loss and the players reflect that in terms of their disappointment."

He maintained, "Neither the scrums nor the lineouts were the critical issue. The critical issue was some team was going to create an opportunity and convert and seven points was a huge score.

"There were two missed calls; it wasn't the execution of the throw as much as miscommunication, which can happen. At the start of the second half, one or two went astray as well but in conditions like that lineouts can be difficult."

As for throwing long too much, he commented, "It's a difficult throw in the conditions, but it's not marked so the margin of error is quite large."

Paddy Wallace concurred with O'Driscoll that "it was probably a game where you want to play without the ball for large parts of it" and modestly made light of his sterling defensive effort against Ma'a Nonu to augment a sharply taken try by saying, "Obviously they were going to try and target myself and Rog down that channel and test our defence. The way conditions were it was tough to string two passes together so we could increase our line speed a lot and make it hard for them."

As for his try, he said: "It was about finding space. I gave Rog the shout and we both swept to the blind side. I picked a forward, got on the outside of him, and managed to barrel my way over. Nothing pre-planned or anything, just identifying space and taking advantage of it."

David Wallace conceded that, feeling he'd never done himself justice against the All Blacks, he had a point to prove. Yet acute disappointment was his abiding emotion, while he for one was mindful of the mistakes of the past.

"Just coming from my experience two years ago, we're in a kinda similar situation. It's probably going to be different conditions and Australia are a great attacking team. We seem to struggle more against Australia when they're at home.

"I think the last time they were saying it was a bridge too far after a long season. This is the 53rd week of this season. I don't think that matters too much. Maybe we got ahead of ourselves the last time, but I think we can't be complacent against Australia. We'll have to step it up another gear."