INTERNATIONAL RULES GAMES: IT WILL be at least the end of this week before Ireland's international rules panel is announced. Manager Anthony Tohill and his selectors have been assessing players at trials over the past two weekends and may release the final list of 23 on Thursday.
The Australian travelling party will arrive in Cork next weekend in advance of the first Test in Limerick on October 23rd.
Tohill’s task has been complicated by the current wave of county championship finals and semi-finals, to which many prospective players are committed at this time of the year.
Footballer-of-the-year elect Bernard Brogan had expressed an interest in participating but his club, St Oliver Plunkett’s, was still involved in the Dublin championship until last weekend. He is now available for selection.
There remains however ambiguity over the McMahon brothers, Justin and Joe, who each made significant contributions to Ireland’s series win in Australia two years ago but whose club Omagh drew its Tyrone semi-final with Carrickmore on Saturday.
There has been a degree of secrecy this year about the Ireland management’s plans that hasn’t been the case in previous series. No one even knows the identity of the captain for the Tests although there has been speculation that Armagh and international rules veteran Steven McDonnell may be the choice.
Tyrone’s Seán Cavanagh was a success in the role two years ago, playing superbly and leading the team to a first series win in Australia for seven years but it is standard practice for new managers to appoint their own choice as captain for the duration of their two years in charge.
Kieran McGeeney, who captained Ireland in Seán Boylan’s first year in charge in 2006, had retired by the time the team made the return trip two years later.
Late selections have been part of the territory for Ireland managers given the uncertainty over club activity.
In both the most recent home Tests, 2006 and ’04, the final panel wasn’t announced until less than a week before the Tests began.
There had, however, been media events to unveil the captain and training panel, as well as the opportunity to question the manager about his preparations.
Tohill and his management will have available an unprecedented number of players with experience of the AFL. The GAA’s most famous export, Tadhg Kennelly, who returned to the Sydney Swans after a year back with Kerry in 2009 at the end of which he won an All-Ireland and an All Star, is among them.
Others include Kennelly’s fellow Kerryman Tommy Walsh, who went to grand final runners-up St Kilda at the start of the year, Derry youngster Chris McKeigue as well as Mayo’s Pearse Hanley, currently at Brisbane.
There are also a number of players who have returned home after a period spent Down Under, such as Carlow’s Brendan Murphy, Cork’s Michael Shields and Martin Clarke, who was so prominent in Down’s run to last month’s All-Ireland final.
