IRELAND MANAGER Seán Boylan has admitted his team face an uphill march if they are to win Friday's first Test in Perth. He was speaking about the impact of the late arrival of six players due to club commitments at home and was asked wouldn't this make it harder to get the series off to a good start.

"Yeah," he replied. "Then again we know what we're facing and we'll have a right good crack at it. They've put a lot of work into it and prepared very well.

"Even Paul Finlay and Marty McGrath who've come in, in place of Tommy Walsh and Bernard Brogan - we know the lads are up to it because they've been there and had the sessions together so we know they'll fit into it just the same. You'd love everyone who got the call to have the chance but that's the way life goes."

The most significant impact is on the team's ability to play a practice match. One of the lessons of the heavy series defeat in 2005 was acknowledged to be the inadvisability of not having a warm-up match. Boylan and his management team are torn between that lesson and apprehension that the exercise would be meaningless without the full squad and that it might drain the players after their long journey at the weekend.

Eventually it was decided not to proceed with the warm-up, which in the circumstances represents a risk. However, the Australians went ahead with theirs on Monday evening, availing of the offer of a number of local players, who have also been made available to the visitors should they wish to go ahead.

"We did consider it but when we saw the way things were there was no point in doing it," said Boylan. "The one thing you'd want to do in a practice game is hold something for yourselves. There's no point in leaving it all in the practice game. That's the way it is and you just have to make the most of it.

"What I'm saying is if you've only 22 players there you don't want to do things like that because remember how long we've flown and you don't want to burn the energy out of the lads."

The Ireland manager reported that his players, who trained in Fremantle yesterday in temperatures of 35 degrees, were struggling a little with the new rule restricting the number of hand passes to four at which stage the ball has to be kicked.

"It was amazing the number of times fellas were getting caught because you know the way it is at home with taking so many steps and some fellas get away with it.

"In our last session half a dozen times we got caught with it - Pat McEnaney (Ireland referee for the series) was very strict with it. I think once you get out there in the heat of battle I think you'll do it right. It's the best you can hope because the practice sessions are to correct the things you're doing wrong."

An old bugbear for Ireland teams in the series has been the implementation of the inter-change system, a feature of the AFL game which Australia have been able to exploit by means of superior rotation. This is now to be limited to 10 changes per quarter. Boylan accepts that it is another aspect of the series that has been affected by the absence of a full panel until today.

"We have done a bit with it, but not as much as we would like. Every session that we have had we have had players away with club games. It has been a huge problem for us - they used it so well because it's part and parcel of their game. There's a concept in Ireland that if you're not in the starting team or that you're taken off after the first few minutes, that you're not going well enough. That's something that you have to get over."

However, he believes his team will cope with the physicality of the tackle. "The physical aspect we've no problem with and if it's done within the rules then we're happy," Boylan said.