Australian reaction/Seán Moran: In Melbourne they're used to the rain. So yesterday wouldn't have been too much of a hardship but for the cold. Everyone shivered as even the GAA's state-of-the-art architecture failed to keep out the wintry blasts.
Shivers were going to be Australian coach Garry Lyon's constant companion anyway as his chances of avenging last year's series defeat hung in the balance.
"It got tense," he said. "The one that made me most tense was when the six-pointer just stopped on the line like there was a force field from Nathan Brown - just stopped. I felt, well the gods are against us."
Nonetheless apart from the weather, which suggested the gods were against us all, everything turned out right in the end for the visitors. Ridiculed as a substandard collective before they embarked on the tour, Australia had demonstrated what is already known on this side of the world: determination and team spirit makes heroes out of unlikely candidates in the most adverse of circumstances. And adversity? Lyon had it.
"We lost (Matthew) Pavlich who was our best player. Matthew Scarlett had gastro overnight and we decided to play him but halfway through the second quarter he was off. Brad Scott got sent off obviously.
"Daniel Kerr with a knee - another very good player for us - couldn't come back on. Mark Bickley had a broken ankle but just stayed and gutsed it out and he's now on crutches.
"From that point of view the fighting spirit of this group should not be underestimated. At stages people looked at our group and said it's a pretty ordinary bunch of players. With those guys, numbers down on the bench, blokes playing with a broken ankle - they may not be the most polished group but there'd be few groups with bigger hearts.
"I said to the boys we had seven points up our sleeve and were still very much in the game," was Lyon's account of his pep-talk before the final quarter. But even with those seven, the series deficit was still 12.
"We went after it from that point of view. From the week before I had the confidence that they wouldn't turn it up and we were always going to keep coming. You can never underestimate the spirit of that group."
He had a special word for Luke Darcy whose 65th-minute goal marked the turning point in the match.
"We wanted him to be competitive up there and give our small blokes an opportunity. It kept coming and kept coming and as it came he read it really well and knocked it in. A super effort from the big fella and good reward for someone who had invested heavily in the whole thing."
So far so positive. Then there arose the question of dissatisfaction among the Irish players with some of Australian referee Scott McLaren's decisions. Lyon looked incredulous.
"Weren't happy with the refereeing? Gee, you'd want to walk into our camp and have a look. One thing you don't do from our point of view is whinge or moan about refereeing whether you win, lose or draw. You've just got to take your shots.
"It's a confusing game and at times out there I was absolutely baffled. You get frustrated but you've got to say like the players, the referees have got a tough job. Twice a year they referee a game that's foreign to them. If they were frustrated I can tell you we were as well but that's life."
Life's potential for savagery had been addressed by captain Shane Crawford when he had made a short speech before the match to mark his country's day of mourning for those murdered in Bali just over a week previously.
"We wanted to get the point across that it was a very special day in Australia," he said. "It was coming to an end so when they put on the TV (nearly midnight, Melbourne time) it pretty much would have ended a very special day."
On the future of the series he was upbeat and confident about its prospects when the series returns Down Under next year.