Ireland news: The Irish squad moved closer to the melting pot in the World Cup yesterday when transferring their base from the sun, sea and sand of Terrigal to Adelaide in South Australia, though you wouldn't have thought it necessarily.
So much for the warmer climes of South Australia: the temperature on leaving a scorching Sydney was in the low 30s, on arrival in grey, chilly and cloud-covered Adelaide they were 15 degrees and dropping. The forecast for the next few days isn't much better.
The hordes who will make both the Australia-Namibia and Ireland-Argentina games at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday and Sunday 33,500 sell-outs have yet to descend, much like the other three teams themselves, so the provincial capital had an eerily quiet-before-the-storm feel to it yesterday.
When they do, one imagines there won't be much room to breathe. Basically, a square-shaped city, with 10 grids ringed by the north, west, east and south terraces, it would require an effort to get lost.
They call Adelaide "the 20-minute city", as one can walk from one end to the other in that time. The Irish squad's 18-storey Hilton Hotel is quite a change from their three-floored picture-postcard base in Terrigal, and is right in the hub of the city.
The change in tempo and base has coincided with an apparent change in mood.
The phoney war is over. Though they weren't in any way rude and signed a few autographs, the Irish squad went through Adelaide airport in eyes straight-ahead mode, checked into their hotel and went for a training session in the Port Adelaide Football Club stadium, a large, exposed, oval-shaped home to the Aussie Rules team of the same name.
Further evidence that Ireland, indeed the World Cup itself, will be moving into uncharted territory, if only for this week, is the venue for the weekend's two pool games. The Adelaide Oval is situated slightly to the north of the main thoroughfare. The picturesque home of the South Australian Redbacks cricket team, the ground is also an Aussie Rules venue for the South Australian National Football League.
Surrounded by parklands, the ground dates back to 1871.
There is also a half-hour time difference between Adelaide and Sydney, and so the local kick-off time of 6 p.m. on Sunday for this crunch clash equates to 7.30 a.m. in Ireland.
Anthony Foley, still troubled by a knee strain sustained against Romania last Saturday, once again sat out training and the odds on him taking any part against the Pumas on Sunday diminish by the day.
Gary Longwell is making marginally better progress and were any of the other three locks in the squad unavailable for any reason, the Ulsterman might, at a pinch, be considered, but there is no reason to force his recovery from a troublesome groin strain.
Against that, Reggie Corrigan has fully recovered from the shoulder injury he sustained in a fall in training a week ago, and took a full part in yesterday's session.
