RUGBY/Ireland v Australia: A 38-point defeat at home, which could have been a good deal worse, leading to only one change in personnel suggests either Ireland are hopelessly off the pace being set by the mighty All Blacks and are throwing their hat at it or they can play much better. Eddie O'Sullivan clearly hopes and believes the latter.

Not unexpectedly, the one change sees the dynamic 21-year-old Andrew Trimble being promoted for his first cap at the expense of Anthony Horgan, with the ripple effect seeing three positional switches - Shane Horgan reverting to the right wing, Tommy Bowe switching across to a less familiar left-wing role, and Gordon D'Arcy moving to inside centre.

"In the back line, this is the unit that I think is our best shot," commented O'Sullivan yesterday. "I think Andrew is going to bring something a bit different in the middle and we've still retained Shane Horgan in the side, who's good with the ball, so I think a raft of changes wouldn't have done anything for the team. I think it's good to take a step back, take a deep breath and look at it.

"It wasn't a terrible performance by Ireland, in my opinion. I just thought New Zealand were outstanding and we had very little ball."

Trimble, a devout Christian who has strengthened his beliefs with voluntary work in South Africa, has been a star of the Irish Under-21s for the last two seasons and has seemingly benefited from bypassing the Ulster academy and training in the province's professional set-up last season.

He has exploded onto the scene in his senior rookie campaign and undoubtedly has genuine acceleration and strength in contact, bringing a potency to the Ulster midfield they haven't had since Ryan Constable's retirement. His handling skills have yet to evolve but outside centre is his favoured and best position.

Unfortunately, it's also D'Arcy's, not to mention the convalescing Brian O'Driscoll. Not everyone will agree, but Shane Horgan is a better inside centre than he showed last Saturday - remember his sterling performance against the Springboks a year ago, when he was their tormentor in chief?

Judging by the few occasions D'Arcy has played inside centre, he doesn't have the straight running power of Horgan, Kevin Maggs or Rob Henderson in contact nor, say, the creative distribution or kicking skills of a second five-eighth type like Aaron Mauger. D'Arcy's brilliance is his ability to stand up an opponent and beat him, usually on the outside.

You think of his clean break against the All Blacks last Saturday, when he drifted wide with the pass from Ronan O'Gara to go through the outside-centre channel, admittedly occupied by a secondrow, Jason Eaton.

It revived memories of his player-of-the-championship role in the Six Nations two seasons ago. He is less likely to have the same space now as he had when O'Driscoll accommodated him in what was, undoubtedly, an inspired pairing by O'Sullivan then.

There weren't many alternatives for the coach, although his choice of replacements and the absence of the usual suspects, David Wallace, Bob Casey, Trevor Brennan, Mick O'Driscoll and most controversially Anthony Foley, have arguably further limited his options to the starting team.

"You could look at the pack but I think our set-piece was very good at the weekend," said O'Sullivan. "We didn't lose any lineouts, our scrums were solid, we just didn't have a lot of them. We had a total of 16 set-pieces, only seven lineouts, and New Zealand had 32 - that's twice as much. There's not much you can do about that. I thought our attack was good - we actually broke the New Zealand line on a couple of occasions.

"The areas I think we need to improve on," added O'Sullivan, "is our composure on the football and I think we need to defend a little bit smarter at times.

"There was a bit of inexperience and I suppose we have been bedding in a new defence coach, so there's a transition there we're working on."

Once more Foley, whose previous omission coincided with the 43-21 World Cup quarter-final defeat to France, has been overlooked, even from the replacements bench, which has been left intact.

Considering the starting team has 470 caps, at an average of 31 per player, it's curious to think the team appeared to lack leadership, although O'Sullivan maintained Simon Easterby did "a good job" as captain.

"There's no doubt we're missing a number of our talismans; we're missing Paul O'Connell and Brian O'Driscoll to injury, while Anthony Foley and Reggie Corrigan were missing through selection.

"They're the decisions you have to make. These are roles you have to develop going forward. Guys become talismans through experience and exposure."

Easterby himself conceded that "we let ourselves down individually, we let the coaches down, we defended poorly, we slipped off tackles and we didn't hold on to the ball, so as much as anything we created our own downfall".

The captain and the playmaker, Ronan O'Gara, both explained that the decision not to use the wind tactically with long kicks to the corner (or to test Leon MacDonald) in the air was because the All Black wingers were lying deep.

However, you'd venture that England won't be as one-dimensional against the All Blacks this Saturday, while the Wallabies would be quite happy to see Ireland play exactly the same.