THE MIDDLE THIRD:If the game at Croke Park is similar in lacklustre tempo and tame intensity to the one in Limerick last week, it could be the last we see of the hybrid experiment for a long time

LIMERICK ON Saturday night. Thirty -five thousand characters in search of a scrap. There was an excellent crowd in the Gaelic Grounds and an enthusiastic, noisy crowd too. There was a good old buzz in the city beforehand. The GAA put on a good show, in fairness. Everything was fine except the game.

It’s hard to put a better spin on it than that. The game was just a huge disappointment. I was doing co-commentary for TG4 and found it very hard to be positive about it as it wound on.

The GAA and the AFL should perhaps have been a little bit more careful about telling everybody what they wanted. Because on Saturday they got it and it was hugely disappointing. It wasn’t what they needed. Nobody was demanding a blood bath but people wanted a little edge, some intensity.

I met a few people from Carlow who were telling me Brendan Murphy had a county final to play the following day. I’d say Brendan got more physical contact during the huddle at Carlow than he did all of Saturday night in Limerick. It was that tame.

I genuinely felt coming away from Limerick that if there is a another game played at Croke Park and it is similar in temper and tempo to this one it could be the last we see of the experiment for the foreseeable future. And that would be a pity. Players have enjoyed playing for Ireland and they have enjoyed the trips. Also, whether you like the series or not, it has influenced our game and the way we play has influenced the Aussie game.

I’ve spoken to a lot of former players and to a lot of supporters since Saturday and through it all there is a general consensus that there is some spice needed this Saturday. Badly needed.

I was talking to Jack O’Shea immediately after the game on Saturday and we were both saying how we used to enjoy playing in those games. Part of the reason for that was there was an edge to them and a toughness which made you do everything quicker and which at times brought the Ireland team together when we would have to circle the wagons.

If the series goes down this road it is hard to see a future for it. In this economy, nobody is going to pay in to sit and watch some harmlessness. There was too much apologetic football played last Saturday, too many lads dusting each other down and apologising.

It was the sort of game you didn’t need a referee for. Fellas half-apologising to each other if they knocked each other over. Poor tempo. Fairly one-sided. None of that is consistent with what we are used to in these dust downs.

It looked as if the AFL and the GAA had paid a visit to management and referees and said “one drop of blood and the entire thing would be shelved”. They were like kids in a schoolyard told there would be no half day tomorrow if anybody was caught messing.

Australian manager Mick Malthouse deserves a bit of praise here. You could see early on Saturday when the Aussies hit the pitch that they had brought a smaller team than normal. That was the first talking point. The second was that they were very lively. Not as physically imposing as some of the teams that have come here in the past but quick and lively and more skilful. They used to beat us as athletes. This time they beat us as footballers.

We haven’t seen most of these Aussies before. Only six veterans of previous series came this time but since the time when I played, and certainly since I first began watching, they have closed in on us in terms of the round ball. That was shown by the comfortable way they move the ball forward into space with fist passes. They have no fear of taking the tackle and play heads-up football the whole time.

I thought of their players in general Jack Riewolt was very good, as was Daniel Cross from Western Bulldogs. James Frawley and Kade Simpson were excellent.

One feature they have improved on is they close us down quite a bit in our own back line, forcing us into silly errors, kicking long balls out over the sideline. Ireland are the home team with the advantage of the field and the use of our ball. We didn’t look it.

Adam Goodes was brilliant. He is the proof of something that a lot of Aussies will tell you, that a lot of the most skilful players they have come through from an aboriginal background. The marks, the scores. His intelligence. He was a player to watch. He looked so comfortable kicking scores I wished he was a Kerryman. From the 45-metre area inwards he had a confidence and style about everything he did. He wasn’t alone but he looked a lot more comfortable than anybody on the field when it came to kicking scores.

The level of the Ireland team’s skill was poor. I don’t know if it was tiredness or tactics or what but we were never at the races. Our kicking was very poor and the game seems to have come full circle in this regard. The kick to the chest should be a great strength of our game but the Aussies were clearly superior to us at this skill. The round ball is no problem to the Aussies anymore, they have mastered the feel and the technique. The game was into the second half before they had even kicked a behind. They made more marks than we did, especially close to goal. When they pushed up the field and got closer to our goal and they had to make marks they found the pressure from our defenders easy to deal with.

They improved when the pressure was on.

The one exception ,it should be said, in terms of Irish kicking was Stephen Cluxton, the Ireland goalkeeper whose kicking was excellent. Even Cluxton though was probably overshadowed by how good Dustin Fletcher the Australian goalkeeper was.

Considering it is a position which the Aussies have to learn in order to just play the game, Fletcher was brilliant under high dropping balls all evening and he moved the ball from his goals and down the field very quickly, more often than not looking to Goodes every time he broke out with the ball. All Fletcher’s experience in previous tours seemed to get poured into this one.

For Ireland, Graham Canty was solid and the game suits him. Tadhg Kennelly had a decent outing and Seán Cavanagh, to a lesser extent, impressed me. Other than that, young Brendan Murphy and Leighton Glynn had their moments. There are a lot of players not mentioned there whom we would expect a lot more from.

A feature of the Aussie play I liked was that whenever the ball went dead, the Aussies had a habit of speeding up the game to suit themselves straight away. Mentally the other team expects a breather. The Aussies know the advantage of putting in an injection of tempo. They will up everything in that department every now and then. Ruthless.

They caught us out on Saturday a few times by looking to where we felt we were strongest and attacking us there. As a result it is hard to pick out many of the Irish “name” players who delivered in the way we know they could have.

When Ireland got in around the 45, Seán Cavanagh, for instance, would make great runs to get free to take a mark but our kicking to him was very poor and it seldom came off. Of the exiles, Tommy Walsh was quiet by his own standards and didn’t have a big influence on the game. Kennelly was livelier but he didn’t dominate.

There were lots of disappointments and then there were lots of players who contributed in flashes but didn’t take the game by the scruff of the neck. Bernard Brogan was subdued but at least his goal broke the dullness. When he scored it was like flicking some sort of a switch in the crowd. In the third quarter the Aussies had pulled away and at least Brogan’s goal gave Ireland a chance of coming back. There was a bit of urgency in the final seven or eight minutes of the game which made you feel a bit cheated that it hadn’t been like that all the way through.

On Saturday Ireland need to run hard at the Aussies. We need Ireland to put up a good score early on. The Aussies have never liked the sense of being beaten. Hopefully they would then crank up the intensity.

For that to happen though, Ireland need to go ahead and to be very determined about staying ahead. There has to be a huge increase in the level of our intensity and probably the level of physicality between the sides to keep the series alive. With the rules as they are you have to be physical. That forces the pace of the game to improve. In theory anyway!

I know the players themselves enjoy the hybrid game and we have enough doom and gloom in the country at the minute but that is the way. The game has to get tough or it will become redundant.