"Not as bad as it looks," was the scroll on Denis Hickie's cast and sure enough the winger's wrist was given the all-clear for tomorrow's contest with Australia. Hence Ireland have a first-choice backline whereas the world champions have been obliged to make six changes in personnel, and two positional, due to injuries, unavailability and a demanding travelling schedule.

With Hickie on the wing, John Kelly has been named on the replacements bench, where he is joined by Marcus Horan because of Paul Wallace's withdrawal with an ankle injury. Wallace aggravated the injury, which was sustained while playing for Leinster against Swansea, in training.

In contrast, Australia have changed four of the front five which started against Argentina last Saturday in Buenos Aires. Nick Stiles replaces the unavailable Bill Young at loosehead prop, Adam Freier makes a first start after a debut as replacement against the Pumas for the injured Jeremy Paul at hooker, while Owen Finegan and David Giffin form a new second-row pairing in place of Dan Vickerman and Justin Harrison, who has the consolation of a place on the bench.

The loss of Ben Tune and Mat Rogers means Scott Staniforth and Wendell Sailor come in on the wing, with Stirling Mortlock moving to centre and Matthew Burke reverting to full back in a rejigged backline. It doesn't look a vintage Australian tight five, especially the front-row, though the lock pairing appears stronger.

For all that, there remains a strong core of vastly experienced players running through the side (and especially in an unchanged middle five) as always seems to be the case with the Wallabies. In part it's because they only have three professional teams, and as their coach Eddie Jones admits, simply couldn't imitate the All Blacks' "radical selection" for their autumn tour because they've nothing like New Zealand's numbers, but they nurture and maximise their top tier of players. Hence, seven of their starting line-up have over 50 caps each, and all but four of them are aged between 28 and 31.

A fairly predictable selection in the heel of the hunt then, though Jones also described it as an interesting and exciting one.

"We always approached this tour in a number of ways. Firstly we want to do well in the matches, but secondly we want to develop the squad so that by the end of the tour we'll have a pretty good idea of where people are placed in terms of Test rugby, and maybe in some cases different positions, and maybe starting rather than finishing a game because we do endorse a philosophy of a squad 22."

In addition, Jones highlighted the need to get fresh legs into their side due to the difficulties of their preparation for this game. Having arrived in "dribs and drabs" from Buenos Aires on Monday, coupled with a customary day's rest on Wednesday, as a result they've had just two full sessions this week. Yesterday's warm-up, on a pitch at their Portmarnock Hotel base, featured a game of Gaelic football.

The selection of Finegan in the second-row, where he started his playing career, highlights the slightly experimental nature of their selection.

"Owen has played a fair bit at lock and has done very well at blindside flanker. One of the impressive features of our winter season was the development of Nathan Sharpe and the balance we had in our tight five between ball-runners and ball-winners, and we felt that Owen might be able to play a similar role to Nathan. He's a very damaging ball-runner himself, Owen, and has pretty reasonable line-out skills so he's a guy we'd like to look at in that more ball-running-type lock role."

The onset of the World Cup, agreed Jones, accentuated the individual and collective desire to play well. The Wallabies have won on their last seven visits to Lansdowne Road dating back to their last defeat at the ground in 1968. "Significantly against Ireland at Lansdowne Road Australia has a proud record and is one we'd like to keep going."

The Wallabies' coach is hopeful the Argentinian game, with its high number of penalties and first phases, was a one-off.

"If the weather keeps as it is - we've had some beautiful days here - and the referee (New Zealand's Steve Walsh) is sympathetic to continuous rugby, and both sides go out to play positive rugby, I think we'll see a lot more ball in play. We'd like to keep the ball alive, we've been working on a few different things in terms of our attacking play. We'd certainly like to move the ball around a fair bit."