Compromise Rules: The physical battle is going to be crucial in this year's International Rules series, which starts with Friday's first Test. Ireland are gambling on a smaller, faster team than has been usual and the Australians are aware that the rugby-style tackle, familiar to Aussie Rules footballers, is partly their payback for putting up with the round ball.

"Tackling is a critical part of what we want to do," said Australia coach Garry Lyon. "I've been involved for a couple of years now and I think the Irish boys have become physically conditioned to it and cope with it a little bit better. But it is the one thing that we do in our game that the Irish boys don't and we need to use that to our advantage as best we can."

If the tackle is the biggest advantage, the round ball remains the biggest difficulty for players used to the oval shape.

"You train for a couple of days and convince yourself you've a pretty good handle on it," according to Lyon. "Then you get out in a game situation and . . . that's why the practice match is so critical for us. They've been kicking it okay in training then you get them out here with a bit of pressure on and they try to hit a few targets and they miss and walk away thinking they've a bit more work to do."

He was speaking after his team's practice match yesterday afternoon in Perth's Bassendean Oval. Asked could his tactic be summarised as making their presence felt early and often, Lyon's smoke detector went off.

"Don't misquote me," he joked. "I can see where you're fishing, you blokes. If there's an opportunity in the first 20 seconds to make a good strong tackle, I'd be very disappointed if our players didn't take that opportunity. That's not to say that we're going to go outside the rules of the game. That's the good thing about these games: there's always scope for good, hard physical contact without getting silly."

Lyon was pleased with his team's display against a Western Australia selection, which proved fairly competitive for the first half. Made up of players from the local leagues, just below professional club level, the same side will face Ireland in this afternoon's practice match.

Attended by a surprisingly large crowd in the city's Swan district, the match ran out of steam before the end with Australia winning 59-18 and impressing the watching Irish manager John O'Keeffe with the quality of their kicking and ability to move the round ball.

For Lyon it was an opportunity to get experience for the 12 newcomers to the international series in his panel. The Australia manager also talked about how they have stepped up preparations for this year's series.

"For some reason the home side has struggled in this series and we want to try and turn it around. To that end we got together two days ago down the coast and took a week as a group - something we haven't been able to do in recent years. Hopefully that's going to work to our advantage.

"It's an attempt to replicate what we do when we travel. We're under the one roof, you can have access to them whenever you want and can have a training session whenever you want. They've committed themselves to it, which is wonderful.

"We were very, very rusty today. There's a lot of boys who haven't played much footy for six or eight weeks. At half-time we gave them a bit of a hurry-up and they were better afterwards but we wouldn't want to serve that up on Friday night."

Although goalkeeping is an unknown function in Australian Rules the AFL players have come up with some good improvisations over the years but in the absence of Andrew Kellaway, an exceptionally good goalkeeper, who is getting married, the home side might struggle. Yesterday they tried two different players.

"Glen Jacovich has first crack at it. It's new for him and today was his first game. We used Clint Bizzell at the other end at half-time but Glen's our first preference and he's great enthusiasm for the task."

Jacovich has been taking special coaching with a brother-in-law who has experience of keeping goal for local soccer side Perth Glory. Two years ago Lyon had to switch goalkeepers in mid-preparation when he decided to drop his original choice, Darren Gaspar, and go with another panellist Simon Goodwin.