INTERNATIONAL RULES:THERE MAY come a day when an International Rules series will be reported on the merits of its football rather than the movements of the Doomsday Clock, which charts the game's progress towards or away from extinction.

That day certainly didn’t arrive this year. From the start there was unease amongst the AFL and its support base about the likely attendance in Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium and the apprehension was well founded. Then last Friday in Gold Coast, an ill-judged promotional venture – trying to sell a dead rubber in relatively new AFL territory – ended up with the worst attendance in 21 years for a Test.

Adding to the gloom is the fact that attendances have been falling in Australia since the 2003 series; in other words what has happened to the international series over the past week might not simply be a bad day at the office for the AFL but confirmation of incipient insolvency. There is implicit in the explanation of AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou to his opposite number Páraic Duffy an admission they got a good deal wrong in setting up this year’s series. Notwithstanding the difficulties of player availability there appears to be confidence that higher-profile players will be available for the trip to Ireland in 2013, which was confirmed after Friday’s talks between the two chief administrators.

The problem will come for the AFL with the next home series in three years’ time, also confirmed on Friday. Like the very first staging of the revived internationals here in 1999, the focus will be on what the public thinks. There was a resounding thumbs up that year with over 100,000 attending the two Tests and it will need a major effort to propel the Tests back to something approaching that level of public interest.

From the Australian perspective it’s easy to understand the problems. The AFL run a big-business mass spectator sport. Expansion has meant longer seasons and it’s becoming harder to find players who will surrender a reasonable chunk of their holidays to play a different game, particularly with the close season needed for injury management in many cases.

If top players don’t engage the public won’t and Páraic Duffy was correct to point out that Ireland won’t remain some kind of international rules Shangri-La for long if interest dies in Australia.

It can’t be stated frequently enough that the series is about one thing – crowds. Public interest bankrolls the whole idea of the internationals and neither organisation is going to divert funds to finance something in which the public have no interest for all that it’s an interesting and challenging concept for players on both sides of the world and allows a structured exchange of ideas between two sports with much in common.

On the field Ireland have to be applauded. The performance in Melbourne was one of the best of any in the history of the series and the havoc wrought with various records proves that there was also empirical merit to the display even though there was plenty of evidence to suggest that this was one of Australia’s weakest efforts.

Anthony Tohill is one of the major figures in the GAA’s international history and the first of the younger generation – those who played in the early stages of the resumed series from 1998 – to graduate to management.

His knowledge, selection of a formidable management team and ability to build a meticulous challenge to Australia – at a time, remember, when Ireland’s capacity to compete was at issue – has been hugely impressive.

In answer to a question about the future and this having been possibly his final involvement, he joked that there was no possibly about it. But if the GAA is to maintain its commitment to the series there should be a standing committee on International Rules, which draws on the experience and enthusiasm of people like Tohill and other interested individuals.

It should select the coach and support structures and ensure that continuity is maintained rather than the current system that depends exclusively on presidential imprimatur. For a change the question of discipline hasn’t arisen as a major issue in the series although there were some volatile moments in Friday’s Test, which caused great unhappiness in the Ireland camp. These situations need to be addressed. Both organisations have done great work in communicating the rules and their enforcement to players but discipline breaks down under pressure.

In future it has to be made clear to Ireland managers and players that it’s not acceptable to bad-mouth the AFL official in public as a complaint mechanism of first resort even though both Ciarán McKeever and Finian Hanley looked wronged by their yellow cards whereas a couple of Australian delinquencies went unpunished.

There also needs to be more control on the line – Australian television was taken aback at how often Tohill entered the field – but they are matters for another day.

In the meantime the abiding image should be an excellently prepared and well delivered Irish challenge. It’s a pity it happened in a series over which it’s best to draw a veil but players, management and officials all deserve that recognition for a job well done.