When the Australian international rules team were in town a couple of weeks back, you couldn't move for the bitter invective being aimed in their general direction. On these pages alone they were called "a bunch of flamin' galahs" and "potentially the most loutish bunch of athletes Australia has ever sent abroad". But today, we could be talking about a different nation entirely.

There's huge respect, and admiration even, within the Irish camp for John Connolly's Wallabies, and you're unlikely to find a nasty word written about this bunch of Australian tourists no matter how deep into the redtops you delve. In many ways, it centres around on-field intelligence. While the perception was, and still is, that those Australians with the sleeveless shirts use pure brawn to assert the dominance, their countrymen with the longer sleeves and collars have worked their way to close near the top of world rugby through use of the grey matter.

That's not to say they're not physically able, but their tactical cuteness on the park is the attribute that would appear to have the Irish camp most worried heading into this afternoon's game. "The problem with Australia is that you don't know what's going to happen on the pitch until you get out there, " says Eddie O'Sullivan. "It's a bit like trying to find out where the weakness might be, it's going to be a very tactical game, and it's going to be a challenge for me on the day. When you play some teams, you're in a 'what-you-see-is-whatyou-get' situation, but against Australia the challenge is often whether you can adjust your gameplan as the game goes on."

Brian O'Driscoll's views mirror those of O'Sullivan and it would seem that out there on the field against the Wallabies, all is not what it might seem. "Once we broke the South African lines, the spaces opened up for us, " says the Irish captain. "Against the Wallabies you can never be sure the same thing will happen, they often appear to be tempting the opposition into space knowing that they have the resources to cover them.

It can become extremely frustrating to play an attacking role against them, but then again that's the challenge."

That's the challenge alright and it promises to be a fascinating one, not simply to see if they can out-think Australia, but also to discover if their new found assurance against the elite of world rugby can earn results two weekends in a row. History, however, doesn't offer much of a precedent in this regard;

since Ireland defeated an extremely poor Australia team twice in the summer of 1979, they haven't managed back to back victories against any of the Tri-Nations. In fact, they've received quite a spanking when they've attempted to do so, their November 2002 victory over Australia was followed by a 45-7 defeat to the same opposition the following summer, and their victory over South Africa in November 2004 was followed by a 45-7 thrashing to New Zealand last November. They're highly unlikely to concede 45 points today but the victory that's been predicted by many (including the bookies, who bizarrely make them 1/2 favourites) is anything but guaranteed.

For one, there's a pair of Ulster players, Bryan Young and Isaac Boss, who just might need some time to bed themselves in to international rugby. Young appears to have the easier job of the two considering he's up against an Australian front row still trying to re-establish themselves as a force in world rugby. As for Boss, he's oddly become the darling of the Peter Stringer critics over the past six months (Eoin Reddan is a far brighter prospect) and while he's a better-than-average footballer with a nice little break for company, he was the 19th or 20th best scrum-half in Super 14 rugby before he came to Ireland and Australia will probably be happy that he's in ahead of the Munster number nine. Whether the absence of Stringer's rapidfire pass will be missed by Ireland's backs, we'll have to wait and see, but with two top-class backlines going hard at it, we could be in for a high-scoring game.

Ireland will certainly need to tighten up defensively if they're to win . . . they allowed nine line-breaks against South Africa last weekend . . . but in saying that, you'd have to expect that Paul O'Connell and co up front will do enough to ensure that the visitors' backline don't have that much ammunition to work with. For Ireland to win, they're going to have to be working off about 60 per cent of the ball, and even then there'll be no more than five points in it either way. If they can't claw their way to that much possession, the pendulum could swing the other way.

AUTUMN INTERNATIONAL IRELAND v AUSTRALIA
Lansdowne Road, 4.00
Live, RTE 2, BBC2, 3.30