CHRISTY COONEY HAS rubbished speculation that tomorrow’s International Rules test between Ireland and Australia could signal the death of the compromise series.
The game’s future has been a hot topic of conversation down under after the Aussies collapsed to a record 80-36 defeat in front of less than 23,000 fans in Melbourne last week.
That tiny crowd was the latest indication of the Australian public’s apathy towards this year’s tour, a feeling heightened by coach Rodney Eade’s decision to pack his squad with young and inexperienced faces at the expense of more familiar All-Australian stars.
But any talk of collapse is just idle chatter, the GAA president said this morning, promising that Australia’s return visit to Ireland in 2013 would go ahead as planned.
There has been “absolutely no indication” of either country pulling the plug on the series, Cooney told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland after this morning’s press conference.
“The Aussies are with us in 2013 so we’ll have a review this week and discuss where we’re going and maybe we might need to meet some time during the year to discuss the future of the series longer term.
You could hear their coach this morning outlining clearly what he felt about the game and the importance of the game and the pride that the Aussies take in playing in it.
Asked to pinpoint the reason for the overwhelming negativity surrounding this year’s series, Irish coach Anthony Tohill suggested that his Australian counterparts may have misjudged the public mood.
“Sometimes you can be complacent about things, maybe that is the case here,” he said.
“Maybe there hasn’t been the push to get this right from a promotional side, I don’t know, but we are looking after our end of it.
We played at Croke Park last year and had 60,000-plus people … it was probably the biggest sporting event in Europe that weekend.
Cooney, however, was optimistic that tomorrow’s second and final test could be a bit better.
“It didn’t help because we had only over 20,000 at the first game in Melbourne. It was a ferocious evening, you can remember there was a massive downpour. They were expecting over 30,000 but I think the downpour kept people away.
Friday night will be a new departure. We’re here on the Gold Coast, it’s a new area for the AFL to try to promote the game so it will be interesting to see what type of a crowd we get here.
