GAELIC GAMES/International Rules: There are signs of unrest in Australia concerning the imminent tightening of the rules governing the recruitment of Irish players by the AFL. The GAA's most famous export, Jim Stynes, has hit out at the planned restrictions, describing them as "restraint of trade". Seán Moran reports.

During January's meeting to review the International Rules series and specifically the violent scenes in last year's second Test, the question of AFL clubs' recruitment in Ireland was raised and a decision in principle made to ban the GAA's under-21 players from signing up for Australian Rules.

This effectively kills the movement of players, as it is believed to be virtually impossible for players to adapt to the oval ball unless they start in their teens.

Adaptation is difficult in any event and only Stynes, Tadhg Kennelly, the former Kerry underage star who signed for the Sydney Swans in 1999 and won a premiership last September, and Seán Wight, another former Kerry minor who played 150 times in the AFL, have proved successful.

"It's not going to work if they keep footballers in Ireland until they are 20 or 21," Stynes, who won the Brownlow Medal (AFL Player of the Year) in 1991, told Melbourne's Sunday Age newspaper. "When I arrived in Australia I was nearly 19 and up to that age it's okay, but if they make it 20 or 21 it's going to be very difficult. Dermot McNicholl (Derry All-Ireland winner) tried at that age and couldn't make it."

"Seán Cavanagh is one of the best footballers in Ireland, but he's 22 and even for him it would be a huge risk to try Australian Rules now."

Double All-Ireland winner Cavanagh was approached by the Brisbane Lions last year, but eventually declined the offer.

"If I was in Ireland I'd have huge reservations about this," said Stynes. "That's restraint of trade. I don't believe Tadhg Kennelly would have made it had he not come here as a 17- or 18-year-old and I think Setanta ÓhAilpín (the former Cork hurler now playing for Carlton who turns 23 this month) has only got a chance because he is very tall.

"I can see what they are getting at. We wouldn't like it if we were losing our first five draft players to Ireland but I think we should at least allow one or two players every year to come as teenagers and then it's not such a big issue.

"Most of them don't make it but it doesn't matter because they come here to learn different values, professional values and gain life experience."

Stynes also revealed that he was keeping an eye on a 16-year-old Gaelic footballer with a view to recruiting him for Australian Rules.

Support for Stynes's view has come from senior sports columnist Caroline Wilson, who has called on the AFL to refuse to succumb to pressure from the GAA, saying the abandonment of the international series would be preferable to cutting off the supply of potential recruits from Ireland.

"Either way," she wrote, "if it came down to establishing a lineage of Irish-born stars in the wake of Stynes and Kennelly, or scrapping the International Rules series, give me Stynes and Kennelly any day."