Partying Irish play by rules

14 April 2012

Bring together Ireland and Australia, give them balls, booze and betting, and what do you get? A 200 million dollar, week-long party attended by around 500,000 revellers in Melbourne.

And not a punch will be thrown in anger. Well, maybe tomorrow night at Melbourne Cricket Ground - and perhaps in the Telstra Dome on Saturday.

Indeed, although there were never two nations who more enjoyed the craic - and the zillions in green will transform Saturday's Victoria Derby and Tuesday's Melbourne Cup at Flemington into their own Cheltenham down under - they do also love cracking heads in sporting combat.

So much so, in fact, that those Aussies who had talked of "The Irish Surrender", believing coach Eddie O'Sullivan would field a shadow squad for Saturday's World Cup clash to concentrate everything on the quarter-final, should have known better.

Needless to say, O'Sullivan today selected his strongest-possible first XV with only three changes from the bruising Argentina game, two of which were forced on him. Ronan O'Gara replaces David Humphreys at fly-half on form while, with Alan Quinlan and Victor Costello both out through injury, Keith Gleeson and Anthony Foley step in.

"If we did anything less than pick our best team for Saturday, we'd be capitulating for a game we believe we can win," said O'Sullivan. Surrender? Never. Bring on Brian "Waltzing" O'Driscoll and Keith Wood.

Wallabies coach Eddie Jones expected nothing less. "They've got smiling eyes the Irish, haven't they? We fully understand their intention on Saturday is to play as physically and aggressively as they normally do," he grinned.

Remember how it kicked off in the Dublin pool game in 1999 when Toutai Kefu "banjoed" Irish flanker Trevor Brennan and got suspended? That was the sort of stuff Jones reckoned he was expecting.

Yet, forget this namby-pamby rugby stuff. Saturday's game may be the model of restraint compared to tomorrow's warm-up bout with Ireland's top Gaelic footballers and leading Aussie Rules players doing battle at the MCG in a raucous hybrid of the two sports - a game called International Rules.

To the outsider, this just seems a splendid excuse for an annual international punch-up.

It goes like this; the Irish lads, smaller and speedier, usually play a game in which tackling plays no part and suddenly come up against rough-house Aussie Rules boys - one of them's already been dubbed the "Aussie Assassin" by the Irish - who appear to enjoy knocking hell out of them.

In the last six seasons, every game has had at least one outbreak of violence, stretching back to a memorable 40-man brawl five years ago.

Last week's first match of the series in Perth, won by the hosts, maintained this worthy tradition with two Aussies getting suspended for clocking opponents.

In a wonderful exchange after the game, Irish star Des Dolan was asked if the Aussies had acted outside the spirit of the game. He muttered "What do you think?" as a teammate shouted out in the background: "The man's just had his nose broken." Now that's entertainment.

Some of O'Sullivan's shadow squad will be among the 60,000 in the MCG for the event which will begin the Irish takeover of Melbourne. There'll be 56,000 at the Telstra Dome for the rugby.

"And half of them will be supporting Ireland," cooed O'Sullivan. "When you're 12,000 miles from home, that's one hell of an achievement."

And though it's probable the Irish legions will end up emptyhanded in each event - when their best hope in the Melbourne Cup is a 50-1 outsider called Holy Orders, then prayer may have to be the last resort - how much will it really worry them?

Not too much - not with Guinness now shipping in 2,000 extra kegs of black stuff for the week.

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