they've chosen to ignore the more obvious and pertinent question for Irish tastes. It's far more relevant, looking through green-tinted spectacles at least, to ask instead how much South Africa and Australia have improved over the course of the summer and, by extension, whether the Tri-Nations as a package are ahead of anything the Six Nations as a group . . . and, more importantly, Ireland . . . have to offer?

The bad news, from what we've witnessed over the past six weeks, is that it would seem that the answer is a double affirmative. South Africa, when they selected their prime men in the first couple of fixtures on home turf, appeared ominously, well, South African. The physicality of their game is a couple of notches above that of the All Blacks for one, and a fair degree more spicy than anything in Europe.

At times, particularly during their narrow home defeat to the All Blacks, it was difficult to imagine any of Europe's elite sextet being able to even come close to matching the relentless intensity on view. Put any one of the largely bumbling affairs we witnessed in this year's Six Nations alongside that titanic struggle in Durban and it would look like a different sport entirely. Of course, Jake White's side do lack a bit of pace out wide, and a bit of intelligence all over the park, but in hand-tohand combat it's difficult to see anybody but New Zealand living with them for 80 minutes.

As for Australia, they too appear a much-improved outfit from when we saw them before Christmas.

Their scrum is now just about presentable but its their ability to put the ball through phase after phase, and not just pointless phase after phase, that sets them apart from the disorganised rabble that toured in November. Few sides in the world possess as much patience as the Wallabies and with the explosive power and speed of their outside backs when the gaps do open up, as they invariably do the longer you hang onto the ball, they appear a genuine World Cup threat.

All of which puts France, Ireland, England and Wales . . . the four other nations who have a realistic chance of impacting upon the World Cup this autumn . . . in a bit of bother. The thought of England topping Pool A ahead of South Africa and Wales doing likewise in Pool B with Australia might have had some credence at the start of June but it now seems positively implausible.

It's a similar situation for Ireland, if for different reasons. The recent surge in confidence surrounding the side's prospects in France comes not from their largely uninspiring Six Nations campaign of a few months back, but from their clinical dissection of South Africa and Australia in November 2006. Even though both Southern Hemisphere nations were seriously under strength in those autumn fixtures, the intelligent, expansive and cut-throat manner by which Ireland batted them aside gave cause for credible optimism.

But now, consider the following questions. Did Ireland build upon those two performances and bring their game to a higher level during last spring's Six Nations? Only Eddie O'Sullivan himself, in full selfpreservation mode, could give a resounding yes to that one.

In fairness, you couldn't really argue that they've got any worse either but, in terms of visible improvement, it would be fairly difficult to pinpoint. Which brings us to the same question about John Connolly and Jake White's charges.

Have the Wallabies and Springboks improved since their autumn tour of the Northern Hemisphere?

We've already concluded that they have, which leaves Ireland, and anyone else in the Six Nations who fancies themselves, in a changed situation.

Before this year's TriNations, you would have made a decent argument that only New Zealand were definitively better than O'Sullivan's side . . . the point being that you could at least have argued Ireland's superiority over anyone else, even if it wasn't conclusive . . . but now we're back to situation where we're talking about the South Hemisphere three and, after that, the rest.

So while the All Blacks may or may not be in decline, it would appear that at least they've spurred their rivals onto greater things. Which makes Ireland's World Cup prospects just a touch dimmer.