It has only reared its head sporadically but the GAA's international contacts are a subject which will have a great bearing on how the association develops over the years. Yesterday at Croke Park, details of the first International Rules tour to Australia in nine years were announced.

Even in that period of less than a decade there have been phenomenal changes in the environment. The GAA has emerged from a state of well-preserved conservatism into a world where it takes seriously the need to communicate - or try to - in a modern idiom.

For supporting evidence, you need look no further than the standard of match programmes which, if not currently overwhelming, at least attempt to conform to modern design standards. Compare that to what was on offer in the late 1980s when cartoon drawings of legendary past players were evidently considered as the cutting edge of mass entertainment.

Nowadays there is an acknowledgment that the way into the hearts and minds of the public - be they committed GAA enthusiasts or interested outsiders - is through the vernacular. In this environment, RTE can run a promo for their match coverage featuring a nun running out in the middle of solitary prayer in order to catch a taxi to Croke Park.

The effect was catchy and reflected that football and hurling - together with the attitude governing its broadcast - is appealing to a broader constituency than probably used to be the case. In the four years since live coverage of championship matches became the norm, GAA matches have infiltrated areas where the games used be considered marginal.

Hurling has been recognised for the great spectacle it is and the game itself has responded with some of the most extraordinary matches in that time. Football lags behind but is in many ways an unfinished product - a game which is still evolving.

When the Irish last toured Australia in 1990, the world was much as it used to be before the rapid developments of the last five years. RTE didn't consider it worth its while to devote any live coverage to the tour. Maybe this was before the days of widespread sponsorship, but the failure was seen - rightly or wrongly - as a snub to the GAA from Montrose.

For the players on that trip, the indifference contrasted with the public euphoria which had been both expressed and generated by television coverage of the Italia 90 World Cup. Feelings towards the national broadcaster were so touchy that manager Eugene McGee had to explain to the players that Mick Dunne, who was there for RTE radio, wasn't to be made the scapegoat for their bruised feelings.

Match highlights were shown on television the following week - or whenever they arrived by carrier pigeon. This time there's no shortage of media interest. Advanced technologies and sponsorship budgets swollen by a buoyant economy will underwrite far more thorough coverage. The press conference yesterday was held in the museum underneath the New Stand and Coca-Cola were unveiled (as predicted) as sponsors for the series. More print journalists will travel than in 1990.

Whereas the mood in Australia is undecided about or maybe hostile towards the whole International Rules experiment - and sections of the GAA are also unsure about its benefits to the association - the one element in the whole project's favour is its internationalism.

Both games feel the absence of international competition. The public interest generated by sports such as soccer and rugby have not escaped the attentions of those who run these two great indigenous games.

Interestingly, though, the initial impulses of both sports were towards the US example of American football and its staging of exhibition matches around the globe. As well as servicing an emigrant audience, this was part of the rationale behind early Gaelic football tours, the Wembley tournaments and the All Stars matches (coincidentally under current revival).

Australian Rules also tried this route, but the fact remains that without massive hype of a type financially unavailable to either football or rules, competition is the best way of giving each sport an international profile.

The GAA runs its tournaments for overseas units and attempts are made to interest native populations in Britain, the US and Australasia - particularly with declining rates of emigration from Ireland - but it knows that any movement in that sphere will be a long time coming.

Aussie Rules similarly runs international competition - one for under-16s ironically called the Jim Stynes Cup (after Gaelic football's most significant cross-sporting export Down Under). Even on its Internet sites, Rules talks about its growing international popularity and the International Rules series is treated as part of this empire.

There are hopes that Australia will take the hybrid game to its heart this year, but little hard evidence to support such optimism. The arguments about the use of the oval ball have been raised before but they haven't lost their force through over-use.

The series has to be competitive and it has to engage the public in whatever country is hosting the series. There have been dangerous signs that the game is going to lose its balance because of Ireland's greater enthusiasm for the idea.

Last year the old convention about touring sides winning - for reasons of greater cohesion and focus - was reversed. If Australia can't exploit that advantage, what chance have they of capturing the interest of Australian players and supporters in the home series? Yet its success is crucial for the GAA and probably for the Australians if they are serious about developing an international dimension.

The GAA in its more enlightened councils knows that the whole issue of professionalism will come to haunt them. One rugby observer of my personal acquaintance makes the point that Gaelic footballers represent a rich recruitment resource for rugby. Even before professionalism arrived, there was the carrot of international competition and international exposure. If only rugby would wake up to the possibilities. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but the danger exists - remember it was financial constraints rather than altruism which stopped the Australians recruiting talented minors in Ireland.

In order to protect the integrity of the game and its members, the GAA has to be able to provide some of the benefits associated with modern sport but without allowing the implementation of a professionalism or semi-professionalism which will destroy the local identification which sustains the game.

Regular international competition and the exposure it generates would help greatly in this. So there's a lot to play for in Australia in two months' time.