Last November, Eddie O'Sullivan positively bristled at criticisms of the way his team were going about their business but eight months down the line it turns out that the Irish coach actually believed what was being written about him and his team. "Our continuity game has improved, " O'Sullivan stated in the aftermath of his team's 22-point defeat to Australia, "our defence has improved, our line-out has been good apart from a patch today, our scrum isn't as bad as people thinkf we have more confidence on the football and we are a little less predictable as a team."

His synopsis is bang on the money, and maybe it's the case that O'Sullivan had been too close to his team in the past to be able to recognise their faults. If criticisms of his regime have forced him to take a step back and look at things a little differently . . .

and if you take a look at the evidence, it's difficult to conclude otherwise . . . then there's certainly hope that O'Sullivan has the ability to finetune a few elements in the 14 months until the World Cup begins. Even if it may take him a few months to recognise the need for it himself.

Between now and their opening World Cup game against the top African qualifier (likely to be Kenya, Morocco or Namibia) in Bordeaux, Ireland will play either 12 or 13 games, depending on whether they plump for two or three warm-up matches in the build-up to the tournament. That's 12 or 13 games to work on a few specific areas in two specific categories;

firstly how Ireland play the game and secondly, an issue that's arguably more important, who actually plays in those games.

With regards how Ireland play the game, the side have taken major steps in the past six months but it would appear that O'Sullivan recognises that his players need to become more accurate with the football, as he likes to phrase it.

Under pressure, of both a physical and mental nature, we saw numerous examples of Ireland coughing up easy ball (think of Donncha O'Callaghan against Australia, Ronan O'Gara and Paul O'Connell in the tests against the All Blacks) and taking wrong decisions at crucial junctures in the game.

It's not necessarily an easy problem for O'Sullivan to fix but he needs to continue to encourage his side to keep the ball alive and hope that his players learn to become that little bit more careful when the pace of any given game hots up. It will surely come in time.

Aside from that, there's not an awful lot wrong with how Ireland play the game, although the team's back play still appears to be some way short of achieving what its individual constituents are capable of. O'Sullivan's stated policy of aligning his backline extremely flat and depending on a burst from one of his centres to open everything up has worked on occasion in the past, but the argument still stands that a bit of depth in the back division . . . like the mesmerising Australian backs adopt . . .

would suit the Irish backline a lot better. At the very least, there's room for a bit more flexibility in this department, horses for courses and all of that.

But these are relatively minor things compared with O'Sullivan's selection policy, something that's become worryingly stubborn over the past three games. Before the tour we hoped in these pages that the coach wouldn't get results-hungry over the course of the three tests but that's exactly what happened.

Player development, not for the first time in the O'Sullivan era, was chucked in the boot as results and scorelines were allowed to ride in the passenger seat.

There was only one change to the starting line-up, Girvan Dempsey for the confidencelacking Geordan Murphy, over the course of the three games, while the substitutes bench, as we highlighted last weekend, is seen as back-up in case of injury rather than a tactical tool.

O'Sullivan appears to have got his back up on this issue, as he proved with his confrontational stance at the post-match press conference against Australia. When asked a straight-forward question about whether he now regretted not resting anyone against the Wallabies considering his starting team had faded so dramatically in the last 20 minutes, the coach responded as though he'd been mortally offended and asked the journalist who posed the question who he would have "dropped". It was a particularly childish response from the coach to a wholly legitimate query but the way in which he reacted, and the language he used, spoke volumes.

"Dropped" was the term he chose to use, but had any player from the starting 15 for the second test against the All Blacks been replaced for the Australian game, it would have been seen as rotation or experimentation, not the negative term that O'Sullivan chose to use. And to answer his "dropped" question, we would have started Isaac Boss for Peter Stringer, Mick O'Driscoll for Donncha O'Callaghan, Bryan Young for Marcus Horan and Denis Hickie for Andrew Trimble, with all those replaced taking their place on the bench to be introduced on 60 minutes. Not only would that have tested a quartet of players that the coach appears unsure of, it would also have made Ireland a fresher outfit over the course of the game.

But just like there was time to adapt Ireland's style of play back in November, there's still time for O'Sullivan to find 22 to 25 players capable of playing for Ireland in any given fixture. The rest of the rugby world is rotating players, building a squad, experimenting . . . whatever term you want to put on it . . . and we shouldn't be pretending we're too clever to go down that path.

O'Sullivan has argued that Ireland's back-up players aren't good enough but that argument doesn't sit.

For such a small rugbyplaying nation, there are more than enough quality players capable of playing at international level. A lot more than O'Sullivan thinks, at any rate.

Let's take the starting XV from the first and second tests against the All Blacks and work from there. Frankie Sheahan, when he's back to full fitness with Munster, is more than adequate back-up to Jerry Flannery and the two, if Sheahan hits top form, are almost completely interchangeable. Malcolm O'Kelly and Mick O'Driscoll, if they can't usurp O'Callaghan and O'Connell in the second row, are capable of playing any given game if needed, while there's almost an embarrassment of riches in the back row with Alan Quinlan, Simon Easterby, Johnny O'Connor, Keith Gleeson and Jamie Heaslip all more than capable of stepping up to the mark if needed.

Given time on the pitch and a bit of nurturing from O'Sullivan (not something he appears to see in his remit), Eoin Reddan and Jeremy Staunton have the potential to back up Stringer and Ronan O'Gara on any given day, while Rob Kearney, Kieran Lewis, David Quinlan, Barry Murphy (when fit), Tommy Bowe and Ian Dowling can play at the top level.

They just need the opportunity. Admittedly, there is a bit of a problem with frontrow cover but that's not just an Irish issue, almost every top rugby nation is having trouble on that front at this moment in time.

The players are there, they just need to be brought into the fold in a meaningful way.

November is the time to try some of them out and it's vitally important that this happens. Remember, the core of this Irish squad have been injury-free for the past six months but that's unlikely to be the case over the coming 14. There will be casualties and it would be useful if those stepping in had some experience of the international arena. Nobody will accept excuses if Ireland's fringe players are ill-prepared for the World Cup. It's the coach's responsibility to ensure that they are ready.