Rugby: Open-top buses emblazoned with World Cup images and carrying a host of the globe's best players tour through Sydney. Bars and shops are festooned with posters and billboards announcing the imminent rugby feast.

The Aussies know how to put on big events and, unlike four years ago, you sense something big is about to happen.

Rugby union will never dominate the psyche of this sports-mad country quite like it will do over the next two months, and media scrutiny is intensifying as Friday's opener between the hosts and holders of the William Webb Ellis trophy and Argentina looms into view.

While the influx of foreign supporters has yet to kick in, the sporadic arrival of the other 19 countries has added to the sense of expectancy.

Even yesterday there were a few replica jerseys dotted around downtown Sydney, with Irish and even a couple of Leinster ones most prominent.

Already, the best part of 1.78 million tickets have been sold, with every one of the 48 matches expected to draw crowds in excess of the 17,000 that attended the 1987 semi-final in the Concord Oval between Australia and France.

It is also fairly clear that Ireland will be one of the best-supported countries in the competition. Their four pool games are already sell-outs, even Saturday's opener against Romania in the 20,119-capacity Central Coast Stadium in Gosford.

Ireland began their four-match, two-Test tour here in 1999 at the same venue with a 43-6 win over New South Wales Country, and the squad are at the same hotel in Terrigal where they were based for the first week of that four-match tour.

"A lot of people in the Central Coast area appreciate that we have based ourselves here," said coach Eddie O'Sullivan yesterday. "There's been a very good response locally and a lot of encouragement from Australians. Also, a lot of Irish people have bought into this whole World Cup and want to be involved, and then we've got the people in Ireland who are coming out here. It's all building up to what could be an incredible tournament for us vis-à-vis support and buzz and hype, and I think we're going to get big numbers at our games."

Yet part of the reasoning for being based in this generally quiet tourist resort for the opening three weeks, aside from its proximity to Gosford (which is about 80 km north of Sydney), is to seek sanctuary from the buzz and the hype.

"We've always built up for our games by staying a little bit out of the limelight," O'Sullivan said. "It's more to give our players a chance to prepare without being constantly accessed and distracted. If you base yourselves to be in the hub of everything, at certain times you just don't need it, whereas later on in the tournament we've no problem staying in downtown Adelaide or Melbourne. But at the moment we're better off being slightly off the beaten track and getting on with our preparation."

A normally quiet and picture-postcard retreat for Sydney's two-house owners, the squad's spacious, five-star hotel in Terrigal overlooks a tree-lined road which faces onto the Pacific Ocean, although on this bank holiday weekend their hotel has been the epicentre of the town.

Like most places in Australia, however, it also offers the squad excellent facilities. "An excellent hotel, nice setting, good training facilities, good gyms - it's a good place to be," admitted O'Sullivan. "The lads are doing their rehab session in the sea. They're getting the work done, but it's also a good atmosphere."

With the pressure of making the 30-man cut having been removed, the squad seem relaxed and good-humoured, though O'Sullivan says the intensity in training has increased - helped by all 30 players being fit enough to take part.

"There's a good buzz in the camp and it's gone up a notch now that we've hit the ground. I was concerned that we might have taken a few days to get it back, having travelled so far, but we've really hit the ground running."

Ironically, the Irish squad had more difficulty adjusting their body clocks after the slightly shorter trek to Perth last June than in the last week, thanks in the main to getting more sleep on each of their long-haul flights to and from Singapore. O'Sullivan recalled that even up to the Thursday after the Perth Test, in Tonga, players were still waking up in the middle of the night.

Manager Brian O'Brien has observed that the swallows have arrived in force too, though, ironically again, this is the worst weather the squad have trained in for several months, and - if only for now and perhaps the rest of this week - the warm-weather training in Athlone, never mind Bilbao, looks to have been inappropriate.

The recent early-spring heatwave, with temperatures creeping into the 30s, has given way to colder, wetter weather. It rained on the Irish squad persistently since their arrival on Wednesday morning, before relenting on Saturday, when they trained in glorious sunshine at Central Coast Grammar school. Torrential rain and a thunderstorm hit Sydney and its surrounds yesterday, which was a rest day, which meant either a trip to the rugby league grand final in the Telstra Stadium (formally Stadium Australia), golfing, scuba diving, fishing or sightseeing, before they reverted into "Six Nations" mode for the week in advance of Saturday's meeting with Romania at 5 p.m. local time, 8 a.m. Irish time.

With all four pool games conveniently scheduled for the weekends, the squad can afford to lapse into their championship habits for the four weeks of the pool stages, and whatever knock-out time they may spend in Australia.