INTERNATIONAL RULES: At one stage last week a senior GAA official remarked privately that if Ireland were to repeat last year's International Rules success in the first Test in Perth, the game would have to be reconsidered with a view to offering further concessions to the AFL.

Even by the standard of mood swings within the international game from year to year Friday night's demolition job by Australia was startling, and now the talk is back where it more normally is: how Ireland are going to cope.

The Irish team and management under Peter McGrath have repaired to Sorrento, a resort not far from here in Melbourne, for a couple of days in order to get their bearings in a series now poised between failure and humiliation, the latter being a good deal more visible on next Friday's horizon.

That his team should have suffered a scale of defeat only once before equalled was harrowing enough but that it should happen when they were regarded as favourites going into the first Test makes what happened all the more disorientating for McGrath.

Ireland's manager was under pressure on two fronts after the match. Firstly the home media were pressing him on the wisdom of not playing a practice match and secondly the locals were still perplexed by McGrath's - perhaps overly honest - acknowledgement that he hadn't studied the Australian players individually.

There were elements of justification in both approaches. Ireland didn't want to sustain injuries in a practice match, "an uncontrolled situation", as McGrath described it. But there is more to such rehearsals than the physical risks involved.

Players have to get used to the reactions necessary when in possession and threatened by the international tackle. That familiarity was missing on Friday night, with the Irish confused over what to do when tackled and frustrated when they conceded frees as a result.

At least a practice match would have sharpened those reactions even if they could never, as McGrath said, be honed to the sort of edge needed for the Test. This is particularly true for the 10 Kerry and Tyrone players who because of championship success had to miss much of the preparations in Dublin in the weeks before departure.

Of those 10 only three actually played in the series last year and six were making debuts. The other, Tomás Ó Sé, hadn't played for three years. In other words, for most of those from the All-Ireland final counties, there was quite a bit of acclimatising.

Certainly there is hindsight involved in these reservations but the Ireland management knew they were taking a risk - McGrath spoke of the balance being struck - and events have cast doubt on whether it was the correct decision.

On the issue of preparing specifically for Australian players it's slightly harder to indict the Irish management. Any given year they have to be aware of how their opponents are going to approach the game but in terms of detailed information on each player, it's doubtful how much data could have been collected when so few of the Australians have played internationally before.

Armed with the knowledge that the opposition would surge through the middle Ireland could only contrive a very flat-footed response. ("Irish learn that speed kills" was the best headline in the following day's papers.) It's far easier for the AFL to get an idea of how an Irish player will shape up internationally by watching a football match than it is for Ireland to get a sense from watching a Rules match how an Australian will take to the international game.

That was confirmed when home coach Kevin Sheedy told a media conference last week he'd watched the All-Ireland final between Kerry and Tyrone several times with the Stynes brothers, Jim and Brian, whose other role - as round-ball coaches - was equally fruitful for the home team.

The experience certainly stood to Australia because their performance was like watching Tyrone speeded up - an irony when set against Mickey Harte's trenchantly hostile attitude to International Rules.

Specific areas of alarm for Ireland were principally the tackle and the restarts. The tackle has always been a problem but rarely has the team executed it so ineptly even allowing for the speed of their opponents and the conditioning the Austrailians always have.

That has to be tightened up or there's another hiding in store.

There were some whispers about whether Mickey McVeigh might be replaced in goal by an outfield player. The Down goalkeeper did the basics well but his restarts were under constant pressure. It wasn't all his fault; the backs weren't giving him clear options as they stayed tight to their opponents.

But the Australians had a kick-out strategy that involved goalkeeper Dustin Fletcher moving wide of the restart and taking a short kick-out from a defender, thus creating an extra man.

Ireland will deny there was complacency but a week's exposure to media speculation about how the Australians would respond to what was being represented as McGrath's paradigm shift seems to have done little to convince the visitors that they needed to kick on after last year's triumph.

They know now the cost of standing still.