laid at the feet of Sean Boylan and the international rules game a couple of weeks ago. And this morning as my old friend enters the final hours before leading Ireland out at a jam-packed Croker to conclude the 2006 series against the most useless, and potentially the most loutish, bunch of athletes Australia has sent abroad in quite some time, I feel like a man locked outside George W Bush's Oval Office.

I'm banging loudly on the door, and I'm shouting at the top of my voice. But, the mock war is already midway through, and all sorts of highly-paid officials and spokespersons within the GAA are telling the nation to sit back, and enjoy.

The fools. The complete eejits!

This hybrid game is dead on its feet.

Any village idiot can see that. It's over.

Another four or five years and my son Billy, and all of the other under-10s in Lucan Sarsfields GAA club, will have long forgotten it ever existed. This morning, however, as Sean prepares for his final big team talk, I'm preparing to bring Billy and his older brother and sister, and his younger brother Stephen, to the greatest GAA stadium ever built.

Croke Park is a special place to visit. It's fantastic, a real Sunday treat.

My children want to be in Croke Park this afternoon. I will sit with them. The older two know full well the backdrop to this game. My two young boys haven't a clue . . . they don't read newspapers, thankfully.

They have not checked out the Times or the Indo over the last week. Neither did they cast their eyes over the front page of last Tuesday morning's Irish Daily Mirror which proclaimed 'Aussie Rules Star Beat Me Up', and duly informed the nation that one of the gentlemen with the visiting party, a Mr Brendan Fevola, who is obviously a complete gobshite, did his best Arnie Schwarzenegger impression in the team hotel which concluded with a barman having his head locked between Mr Fevola's forearm and his lower torso.

Beautiful.

Mr Fevola has said his goodbyes to this series, and to the country. Yet, in his wake is a Mr Lindsay Gilbee, who has four stitches in his forehead, and who is promising doom and gloom for Graham Geraghty and any other Irish footballer who crosses his path this afternoon. To be honest, I wouldn't be too worried if I was about to throw on one of the Irish jerseys. This group of Aussies looked more like ladyboys than cornerboys a week ago in Galway. I predict dozens and dozens of handbags littering the field in Croke Park by the end of today's game.

The Australians have been making ugly noises and promises for the last 22 years and, so far, thanks be to God, no Irish footballer has had his jaw or both legs broken, and nobody in an Irish jersey has woken up in hospital wondering what day of the week it might be.

Gilbee is just another fool of an Aussie Rules footballer threatening and shaping up as a complete gurrier.

A century of sporting evolution has left us ignorant and uncaring, and completely and utterly sceptical of the nature of each other's game. As hard as we may try there is no common ground . . . and what ground does exist is best suited to a unique blend of Irish-Australian wrestlemania.

In order to appreciate the vast and unbridgeable gorge that exists between the two games an Irish team, one day very soon, will have to play the Australians with their oval football on their oval field. And, feel the effects of a defeat which would probably be somewhere between 200 and 300 points.

Meanwhile, heaven help everyone involved in today's latest contest. Australia coach Kevin Sheedy, as highly decorated as he is at home, has presented himself to the Irish nation as a bit of a clown, fully loaded with gibberish and condescending twaddle. Sheedy looks the part of a poor man's tourist from Down Under . . . what insight, what sense of genius, what endearing or memorable traits has this massively successful Australian head coach offered Gaelic football?

While I'm waiting for someone to put two words together in reply to the above question, let's turn our attention to Sean Boylan, my friend. I'm far more interested in Sean than Sheedy, naturally. Sheedy can end up being headlocked by a barman in his team hotel tonight, for all I care.

Sean Boylan, I know, is a gentleman and a good man. But it's quite likely that he will be the Irish coach on board as this international experiment thankfully bids its adieu to the 'world' stage.

If there is even one drop of Irish blood spilled on Croker this afternoon, then, it's good night and good luck.

Sean Boylan has had a lifetime of achievement in our flawed but honourable game. He should not be here, watching a half-assed Irish selection struggling to defeat a bunch of Aussies, most of whom have never kicked a round ball in anger in their professional careers until last month.

That's what is most demeaning and delusional, for both parties to this awfulness of a game. The Aussies are muscular, finely honed athletes built to catch and chase an oval ball, and kick it over a line which, bloody hell, must be at least 30 yards wide . . . no goalkeeper, no net, just hack the damn thing over the line if you can. Hallelujah. Fair dinkum, and all that rubbish.

The Aussies look like mechanical athletes who have been poorly re-programmed every time they try their hand at this 'international' game. They look daft, and hideously short of any sophistication or refined skill set. The Irish lads, meanwhile, look half-terrified, even against this lot of Aussies.

Boylan's team, unfortunately, also fails to represent even one quarter of Gaelic football's greatest exponents.

It's merely a team chosen for this unusual business at hand, and that's why Kennelly and Begley take pride of place.

Neither is a 'paid-up' Gaelic footballer.

Neither young man would be within half a million miles of a real Gaelic football team representing this country.

What really tickles me, however . . .

don't think I'm annoyed by this folly . . . is the sight of a group of Gaelic footballers, dressed up by Coca-Cola as an Irish team, rejoicing after defeating a bunch of lads who, with a round ball in their hands, don't really know whether to kick it, punch it, lick it, or eat it.

Any decent Irish team should be rightly embarrassed by failing to beat an Australian selection by 50 points under these unfair 'international' rules.

That's part of the great delusion.

Any other group of four or five Irish managers from the past could each put out teams of their own this afternoon which would have an equal right to beat these visitors by the same sort of margin. The demeaning part is that Sean Boylan's team is not a true Irish Gaelic football team. Apart from Kennelly and Begley, I could name another dozen 'Irish' footballers who are involved in today's activities in some shape or form who would not make it onto a true team of the best Gaelic footballers in the country. But that would be deeply unfair to the lads involved.

They have their own troubles ahead of them.