RUGBY:For the few hundred loyal diehards and the splattering of expats who wore the green in the Jose Amalfitani Stadium in Buenos Aires on Saturday, this was tough going.

They watched Ireland draw a blank for the first time in nine years and were then informed by their hotels that, because of elections the following day, Buenos Aires was not allowed serve alcohol after 8pm. Mercifully, there were exceptions.

You felt for some of the Irish players in the 16-0 second-Test defeat to Argentina, notably Eoin Reddan, who would have been given more protection in the terraces than he was on the pitch by his forwards and the referee.

Jeremy Staunton was reluctantly thrown in at the deep end without adequate preparation in a capricious wind. Alan Quinlan toiled superbly in a losing cause.

Luke Fitzgerald came here for two minutes' action, albeit two minutes more than what was granted Peter Bracken.

He was the only one of the 31-man squad not to see any action in this two-Test series defeat, which served its primary purposes, if only to rubber-stamp some names in Eddie O'Sullivan's 30-man squad for the World Cup, and to rule out others. "I'd certainly put more names on the list now," admitted the Irish coach.

"There are still a few hanging there that I might probably use in the first warm-up game to try and put to bed. But let's say if I was 60 per cent there coming here, I'm probably nearer 80 per cent there now, and I think that's probably as much as I could have got out of the tour."

Happy with the defence and set-piece play over both Tests, O'Sullivan conceded the enormous supply of ruck ball on Saturday was often too slow, which in turn affected another inexperienced back line.

While maintaining Ireland did appear to have a try or two in them, he acknowledged the scrambling Argentinian defence was excellent. This was a mantra echoed by Robert Kearney and Gavin Duffy.

Duffy's solid performance at inside centre, coming a week after an equally assured outing at fullback in the first Test, may well have pencilled his name into the World Cup squad. He looks to be one of the tour's main winners.

Stephen Ferris, along with Quinlan, was in the process of underlining his credentials when forced off with a knee injury early in the second half.

"It was a pity Stephen tweaked his knee and had to come off," said O'Sullivan. "I thought he was kind of settling into the game. He had some big moments and I was hoping that as the game would go on - he's very fit and a good athlete - he'd come into it even more, but unfortunately it didn't happen. But I was happy enough with what I saw out there."

There were tit-for-tat suggestions from O'Sullivan and his counterpart Marcelo Loffreda as to how each learnt more than the other about opponents they are set to meet for a ninth time in eight years and for a third, pivotal World Cup clash in succession.

Ireland's back play has been the biggest disappointment, and underlined the dependency on irreplaceable gamebreakers such as Brian O'Driscoll and Gordon D'Arcy.

O'Sullivan will be glad to have them and all his frontliners back in harness come September 30th.