Aussie boss admits to round-ball struggle

THE lack of familiarity with the round ball continues to dog Australian attempts to achieve greater success from the International Rules series, home manager Gary Lyon admitted yesterday.

"You can't emphasise enough how tough it is for blokes who have never played this game. They are on a steep learning curve," he said after a warm-up game with a Western Australian selection made up of Perth-based Rules and Gaelic footballers.

Lyon felt that while his team looked 'pretty ordinary' in the first two quarters, they showed an improvement in the second half. Sensing that the Irish management would be at the game which they were the Australian players mixed their (named) jerseys to conceal their identities.

The Australians won the game 56/18, with one of their more impressive players being David Wirrpunda, an aboriginal player who reportedly had special boots produced for him after becoming accustomed to playing in his bare feet.

Lyon is hopeful a decision to bring his squad together a few days earlier than usual will improve their chances of winning a home series for the first time.

"We hope it works to our advantage. From my point of view it's great. We're replicating in some way what we do when we travel. We can meet whenever we want or train whenever we want," he said.

"We had a lot of boys out who didn't play footy for the best part of six or eight weeks," he explained, joking: "as they fell out of the finals, we sent a ball to each of them. But, we know they were put in the cupboard.

"We trained for the last two days. By the end of the two days you would have convinced yourself they had a pretty good handle on the ball. Then in a game situation they are under pressure, they try to hit a few targets and they miss. They know there's a lot more work to do."

Lyon recognised officially on the Irish side as being very positive in his approach acknowledged there was 'scope for good physical contact,' in the game but that they would play by the rules.

"If there's an opportunity in the first 20 seconds to lay a good strong tackle, I'll be very disappointed if we don't take that opportunity," he said, half-jokingly. "There were a few isolated incidents last year which we'll learn from."

Ireland play the same selection in a warm-up game this afternoon.