Sideline Cut: Thank God for Mickey Harte. Of all the damning criticisms the Tyrone manager made about the International Rules farrago this week, the most obvious is the most important. International Violence is a daft game.

Since the resurrection (for reasons never fully clarified) of a series that was abandoned because of gross international lack of interest in the early 1990s, we have been spoon-fed a slick marketing line about the excitement and speed and skill and bravery of what is sometimes affectionately called "the hybrid game". There is no denying the skill and bravery and commitment of the athletes involved with both countries. And the revived series has been blessed with some thrillingly close finishes in recent years.

But it is still a daft game in that it effectively does not exist except for two weekends a year. It is like coming up with a combination of American football and, say, table tennis, which has the potential for explosive speed, hard-hitting challenges and no little skill but would still be absolutely pointless.

I think Mickey Harte's objection to the International Rules is that they are essentially manufactured for no good reason, based upon a number of similarities between the games that are tenuous at best. True, both sports are played on a field, they involve a ball and have a degree of rugged, full-body contact about them.

But the difference between the balls that are used render them as similar as Gaelic football and hurling. They require completely different skills. It has long been acknowledged that there is simply no way the Irish players could ever hope to master the complexity of kicking with the oval "footie" to the point where they could hope to come within 100 overs of their Australian counterparts.

The use of the round ball has been sold as the "concession" that Australian teams have made so that the series can survive. But the fact the visitors play with the round ball, which is completely alien to them and have learned - with impressive results over the past two seasons - to pass and score with it entitles them to believe that they are, in essence, beating the Irish at our own game.

It is true that the original compromise game was probably fostered from good intentions and a genuine desire by Harry Beitzel's travelling "Galahs" team to explore the possibilities between Aussie Rules and Gaelic football during a 1967 tour.

His fascination was shared by Meath man Peter McDermott, one of the great progressive figures in Gaelic games, and it was those original series of challenge games played against Meath and Mayo that sowed the seed for the modern series that was proposed in the 1980s. When the first Rules game was played in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 1984, just 8,000 people showed up.

The infamously rough return visit Down Under two years later drew a similarly lethargic response, with just 10,000 showing up to see games that carried a touch of the old frontier lawlessness about them. The funny thing is that that period seems like the true golden age of the Compromise Game.

If it was ever going to flower into something real, that was the period. This was a fairly mundane period in the evolution of the GAA and the chance to size up against the bronzed heroes from the Southern Hemisphere seemed like an exotic idea.

Because this was still an age when live television sport was the exception rather than the rule, there was a degree of honest curiosity about the whole idea and the dominant Australian Rules players - teak-tough men like Terry Daniher, John Platten and Robert DiPierdomenico cut fascinating figures. And learning that our team (though the team that Kevin Heffernan took out was so athletic and stubborn and charismatic it should have been no surprise) could compete with the best that the Australians had to offer was thrilling. Still, though, it was clear back then that both parties had problems with the game.

The main one was that very few of them seemed to know what the hell it was supposed to be about. Every match was laced with mutual resentment, a sense that there was no way the New Colonials were going to be allowed boss the Old Colonials, and vice versa.

Some of the hits were pulverising back then and nobody seemed that worried about it. But still, the Rules were shelved indefinitely around 1990.

They seemed to have survived their second life in spite of themselves. In 1998, Ireland manager Colm O'Rourke, normally a rock of sense, actually suggested that Ireland's Brian Stynes should switch to the Australian team for the second Test to make it more competitive.

The whole exercise was that loose and uncertain in the minds of the performers. But somehow, with a good sponsor on board, the born-again Rules managed to tap into the public imagination and over the following years people came in droves. It was a far cry from Leigh Montclair's observation that the Rules "were a bit like the Vietnam war - nobody at home cared about it but anyone involved did".

With the Irish players adhering to increasingly professional fitness regimes and the Australian teams bringing players who seemed caught between wanting to win and (understandably) wanting to let rip at the end of a long season, some of the games were gripping and, because of the high-octane nature of the sport, were coloured with spectacular challenges.

It looked great and the toughness - the hitting - became the best marketing weapon the Rules could have. The problem was last year's series crossed the line and the sight of Tom Kelly of Laois almost getting decapitated in the name of the jersey provoked a strong reaction and the solemn warnings from both the GAA and the AFL that that kind of barbarism would not be tolerated.

So we reach tonight's meeting in Salthill, floodlights cooking to help generate the atmosphere and a full house already guaranteed.

The players have been warned to be on their best behaviour but the dilemma is that if the contact is minimised, the International Rules becomes little more than a stop-start exhibition of catch and kick. A few years of that and the public will soon become bored with the whole exercise.

It should be pointed out that the players who have represented both countries down the year have clearly been proud to do so and many put their hearts and souls into the series when they were involved.

But it is still hard to see it as anything other than a game that is annually forced into being rather than a sport that has evolved naturally. If International Rules (which sounds likes a United Nations term) is a game at all, then it is a game without soul.