Was the International Rules series a success last year?

For the Irish team, at least, it was, given that they won fairly comprehensively. For both sets of players it was too, given that they had the chance to wear their country’s colours. And seeing as both associations have signed up for another four years, it seems the GAA and the AFL also see it as some sort of success. But, at the end of the day, the series has to have some sort of commercial success and support from both sets of fans if it wants to survive.

The last few years have seen large crowds of up to 60,000+ attending the games here in Croke Park and in the MCG. However, the last test in Adelaide only attracted about half that number. Clearly, both countries need their absolute best players to line out for their countries. This isn’t in any way an attempt to devalue a great victory by the Irish team, but there were several notable absentees from the Aussies and the Irish, something which hardly inspired their fans to turn out in droves.

In order to make this a more commercially viable and successful series, there will have to be changes made. It’s fairly safe to say that the fact that the Irish squad was together for some time before, and in between the tests, helped the team to ‘gel’ much better, which could well have made the big difference that became clear - especially in the second Test. According to the Grand Old Dame of D’Olier Street, an tUasal McCague has hinted about changing the pre-series arrangements for Ireland next year. ‘Fingers crossed’ that this will mean the players will have the chance to train properly for the matches here in Ireland.

Talk of training brings me to another point: it’s very hard for both teams to actually prepare for the matches. It’s not like you can have a decent challenge game against another International Rules team. Witness the demolition of the Football Academy in Melbourne before the first test. While it’s not terribly bad for the Irish lads, it can’t be that easy for the Australians, especially when you consider that they have to get used to using the round ball. So, more training matches, with more competition are needed. So what about bringing in another country?

While surfing the internet this week, I came across something which piqued my interest. I’d heard that there were plans to try to bring in one or more other countries to make the series more competitive, but I could never visualise a way that they could do that. Now this is hearsay and conjecture, but it does bear thinking about. It could make the series a lot more credible and popular, to say nothing of profitable.

The story goes that this came from a leaked AFL/GAA document. So here goes: Phase one of the International Rules series was to devise a system so as AFL and GAA players could play a competitive international game against each other at the highest possible level. There would also have to be a period of time to get the public used to the idea, and to build up a groundswell of support amongst fans of both codes once the initial novelty value had worn off. It would seem that this has already been achieved, so the time to go to Phase two must be coming soon.

Phase two is essentially a few plans designed to improve, expand and consolidate the whole concept. The most interesting proposal is one involving the introduction of a third test, and, a third team. Allegedly the ‘nature of the hybrid game will allow teams from varied sporting environments to join much easier than trying to establish grass roots support for an existing code’. At the moment, the one country with a pre-existing GAA tradition is the USA, which apparently has ‘an abundance of representative starved sportsmen’.

The idea is the USA will provide some much needed competitive practice matches before the actual test series itself until such time as their team becomes realistically competitive enough to participate in the test series. At that time, the hope is to expand the concept further by involving a fourth team. Obviously, any team that does play for the first time will want to be competitive as soon as possible, and so the hope would be that they would only participate as practice opponents for one series before joining the test series themselves.

According to the report I read, this could start as early as next year, with the USA competing in two practice matches against both Ireland and Australia before the start of the test series proper. Not alone would this be a huge boost for the series in terms of broadcast rights alone, but it would hopefully make the series more competitive and credible as a new international sport. Whether this ever happens or not is in the lap of the Gods (or the mandarins in both organisations and other potential countries to be more exact). I for one would welcome any development of this sort.