Cluxton available to lead Ireland's challenge

INTERNATIONAL RULES NEWS:THE BULK of Ireland's International Rules panel had arrived in Melbourne by last night before next weekend's first Test against Australia.

Doubts surrounding Ireland captain, Dublin’s All-Ireland winner Stephen Cluxton, were clarified over the weekend by the defeat of his club Parnells in the Dublin championship, which also cleared Colm Begley to take part in the series.

Australia haven’t been quite as lucky in the lead-up to the series with one of their players cut from the panel after a car accident in the early hours of yesterday morning.

“AFL and Australian team management have determined that Colin Sylvia will not join the team for IRS series against Ireland,” AFL spokesperson Patrick Keane said. “It was the view that his preparation for series was not appropriate and he should not join the team. The squad will now stand at 23 players.”

The Melbourne Demons player left the scene of the accident but later assisted police with their enquiries and was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Galway’s Finian Hanley is also now expected to be available after his club, Salthill-Knocknacarra, bowed out of the Galway championship yesterday afternoon.

Players still to arrive include captain Cluxton, Begley and Wicklow’s Leighton Glynn, all of whom have contributed significantly to previous series wins.

According to the GAA’s Feargal McGill, Ireland will not now play a formal practice match.

“The team played a touring VFL selection last Wednesday,” he said. “The VFL selection also played matches against Na Piarsaigh in Cork, Salthill, Ballyroan and Donaghmore Ashbourne.”

The Australians practised yesterday in Melbourne and Keane said the Australia management was happy.

“Basically we did an hour and a half,” he said. “What I do know, as I’ve been saying the last couple of years, is that we’ll be fast. We’ll find out how we go kicking the ball and playing but I do know we’ll be fast.”

Asked about the demand for tickets for Friday, Patrick Keane said yesterday that the AFL were encouraged.

“They’ve started to pick up in the last couple of days. Obviously we’ve still got some work to do, as we want to get the crowd beyond 30,000 and up to 40,000. We’ve got a week of heavy publicity around our team. Once the Irish are in town, that helps focus people’s minds as well.

“We’d a reasonable turn-out of our media today at training and players are going to be available pretty much every day.

“Generally, walk-up supplies as many as 50 per cent of the crowd if not more. By Friday we’d reached over 10,000 with the major promotional effort to come.

“We’re committed to the next series in 2013 and the GAA and AFL will talk about its longer-term future when the two organisations meet over the next week or two.

“The same as in your country, we’ve had groups of people over a consistent period of time who don’t think we should be playing and others who think we do. I think that discussion’s never going to go away.

“Our players are always happy to play once or twice. You look at all the best players in our competition and they’ve played at some point. Everyone who plays it enjoys it and crowds go along to watch it. Obviously there’s a section of our media who don’t like it but that’s where we’re at.

“The chief difference between this year’s and last year’s teams is about 600 games of experience, which last year was Adam Goodes (last year’s Australia captain), the dual Brownlow medallist and Dustin Fletcher, who’s been an absolute star for us as a goalkeeper. Consistently for the past four or five series, we’ve tried to pick a younger, quick side because that’s how we’ve decided we can win – over the past four series, we’ve won three.

“The main difference this year is that we have two more, younger guys in place of two absolute super stars of our competition, last year.

“But Andrew Swallow (North Melbourne) is a Best and Fairest (club Player of the Year) winner. James Frawley (Melbourne) and Stephen Milne (St Kilda) are All Australian (AFL All Stars) and Brad Green (Melbourne) is a club captain so you’ve got a sprinkling of very good AFL players.

“It’s just last year we had Adam Goodes, a guy who’ll walk into the Hall of Fame, and Dustin Fletcher, who’ll probably do the same.”

New Australia coach Rodney Eade meanwhile has caused a stir by suggesting that Gaelic football had yet to evolve fully.

“They (Ireland) have had their thoughts for 100 years and they’ve stayed the same, whereas our game’s evolved and our thinking has evolved,” he said.

“I think we’ve got a bit more willingness to try different things. They’re very much about sticking to the tried and true, the way it’s been played for a long time.

“We’ll probably try and push the boundaries at times.”

As an example, Eade expects to employ forms of AFL-style zones to negate the visitors, although concedes the different nature of the game will make it a challenge.

“When you set up zones (in Australian Rules) it’s usually from a stoppage situation where you’ve got a time lapse to be able to do that,” he said. “But International Rules is non-stop.”