FAST FORWARD to next November, imagine a Southern Hemisphere team in Ireland's position and it's hard to believe the New Zealanders, Australians or South Africans would take a similar approach to selection policy for an end-of-season tour.

To them, while Grand Slam tours and victories are the aim, they are also seen as relative footnote in history. There is greater scope to experiment at the end of a long season, when many frontliners have been just that, playing regularly in the front line for country and provinces alike.

Of course, world rankings have assumed greater importance given they will be the criteria upon which the draw for the 2011 World Cup will be made next December. Hence, Ireland have a real need to at least retain their current ranking of eighth and thereby ensure a second-tier seeding.

It is also entirely understandable the Irish players, especially, and management want to end a miserably unfulfilling 11 months with a win. In an arduous season, never in the professional era has so much blood, sweat and tears been spilled for so little reward: seven defeats and just five wins.

Last Saturday in Wellington was a case in point, even down to yet another rainsodden night of arm wrestling, as the players pushed themselves to exhaustion in conditions every bit as energy-sapping as in Stradey Park, Musgrave Park, Thomond Park, Ravenhill, the RDS and elsewhere.

But perhaps players need to be protected from themselves on occasion. Rewind to November 2006, when Jake White, especially, and John Connolly were content to experiment with rookies or try players in different positions, while many frontliners were left at home. Nobody was dropped, per se; more the managements looked at increasing their options in the Test window best suited to doing so. Graham Henry and the All Blacks have also consistently done this, while the French just blithely experiment and carry on with their Top 14 into late June.

Alas, "rotation" is still, apparently, a dirty word in Irish rugby. Players are dropped or replaced only when injured or off form.

Head coach Michael Bradley maintained they looked at every position.

"We felt that this was the best side to do the job against Australia and on the basis of that, that's why we nominated it," he said

Fair enough, and maybe he is right. But might not freshening things up reduce the risk of mental fatigue come the last match of an end-of-season tour?

Peter Stringer, for example, outside the match-day 22 in Ireland's last three pool matches at the Coupe du Monde, on the bench throughout the Six Nations when playing just three times and on the bench throughout the knock-out phase of Munster's campaign, will understandably bring freshness as well as frustration. So, most likely, will Rory Best. So it was with Paddy Wallace last Saturday.

Take the tighthead position. While judicious use of Tony Buckley in the Magners League has lightened the load on the 34-year-old John Hayes, the 85-times capped veteran has now started Ireland's last 11 Tests this season as well as all Munster's nine Heineken Cup games. Along with seven Magners League starts, that makes next Saturday's game his 28th start of the season. Not unreasonable, it's true, but why not keep him in reserve to spring from the bench in the last 20 or 30, or earlier if needs be?

While the 27-year-old Buckley has started 14 competitive matches for Munster, only one was in the Heineken Cup, and that was at an ill-fitting loosehead when he lasted 33 minutes. Thus he has not started one Test or Heineken Cup match at tighthead all season.

If we are to find out whether Buckley is up to Test standard at tighthead, when if not now, against the less-than-famed Wallabies scrum, will we do so?

And one could go on. There's Shane Jennings. And Ian Dowling. Why not start them here?

Instead, this tour is uncannily akin to the three-Test tour of these two countries a couple of summers ago under Eddie "who would you drop?" O'Sullivan. Then only 16 of the 30-man squad were named to play, and only 23 of them saw duty of any kind; Tommy Bowe, Gavin Duffy, Anthony Horgan, Peter Bracken, Leo Cullen, Anthony Foley and Alan Quinlan wore suits on three successive Saturdays.

With the match-day 22 unchanged, the Perth Seven have been replaced by the Melbourne Seven of Bryan Young, Bernard Jackman, Malcolm O'Kelly, Stephen Ferris, Isaac Boss, Gavin Duffy and the squad's one uncapped player, Ian Dowling, not forgetting the injured Alan Quinlan and Luke Fitzgerald.

Bradley argued that selecting Johnny Sexton for the Churchill Cup would ultimately ensure the young Leinster outhalf more game time, and that's how it has panned out. Furthermore, Paddy Wallace's selection has been handsomely vindicated by his performance in Wellington, though one ventures Henry, Deans, White, Connolly or Marc Lièvrement would have little compunction about bringing a player such as Sexton along and pitching him into a Test.

The ghost of Eddie lives on, it would seem. This Irish tour was left in what were clearly felt to be safe hands with Bradley, and fair enough. His remit is only for two games, and - who knows? - his hands may have been tied.

Unfortunately, little will have been learnt from this trek down under other than Wallace's viability as an inside centre. What else about these players, in truth, was not already known?

Thus, once again, Saturday's game is about little more than the result. One sincerely hopes this Ireland team finally achieve something tangible for their unstinting efforts this season, though at least the bulk of them have European Cup or Magners League winners' medals to cherish. A first Ireland win in 25 attempts in the Southern Hemisphere is, in many ways, the least they deserve.

Irish rugby needs, however, to adopt a different, bolder approach to these end-of-season tours.

IRELAND XV

(v Australia, Melbourne, Saturday)

15 Rob Kearney (Leinster)

14 Shane Horgan (Leinster)

13 Brian O'Driscoll (Leinster, capt)

12 Paddy Wallace (Ulster)

11 Tommy Bowe (Ulster)

10 Ronan O'Gara (Munster)

9 Peter Stringer (Munster)

1 Marcus Horan (Munster)

2 Rory Best (Ulster)

3 John Hayes (Munster)

4 Donncha O'Callaghan (Munster)

5 Paul O'Connell (Munster)

6 Denis Leamy (Munster)

7 David Wallace (Munster)

8 Jamie Heaslip (Leinster)

Replacements: J Flannery (Munster), T Buckley (Munster), M O'Driscoll (Munster), S Jennings (Leinster), E Reddan (Wasps), G Murphy (Leicester), G Dempsey (Leinster).