Pardon us for breaking through the wall of publicity encouraging all sports fans to get in early to get their fill of Gaelic-Australian football. [Do we hear the sound of yawning?]

Mike Sheahan makes a couple of quite valid points in his column yesterday. Who knows which AFL players are in the squad for the Irish series? Or where the “Tests” will be played and when? And we’ll add our own question: Who the hell knows what the “rules” are?

We’ll give the AFL points for persistence, but the concept of blending two vaguely similar national games to create a series where national pride is supposedly on the line has surely run its race and should be mercifully put down as soon as possible.

There’s an old management consulting adage that suggests a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, the AFL-GAA International Rules series is an ugly camel.

The differences between AFL and Gaelic are simply too large to credibly blend the two games together. It comes down to the issue of tackling — a staple skill of the Aussie game and approached with greater intensity every year. It is laughable that the AFL expect players who are trained to tackle fiercely to back off. It’s even more laughable for the GAA to expect their blokes, who play a light-contact sport, to suddenly approach every contest with red-blooded vigour.

There’s no doubting the courage of the Irish players, but the task confronting them is insurmountable. A round ball and a crossbar don’t make up for tackling, albeit that it’s toned down. Lest there be any doubting the scope of the task, consider how many Irish players have carved out a steady career in AFL even when they were living and breathing it every day. Four. Jim Stynes, Sean Wight, Tadgh Kennelly and Marty Clark. That’s it! Setanta O’hAilpin was, in the end, despite playing eighty games, a curiosity rather than a genuine AFL player, and no-one else has come within a bull’s roar.

Time for the canvas curtain to be erected and the lead aspro to be administered to this hotch-potch.

Ed: Let’s ask another question: How is it that any contest against a foreign team seems to be tagged with the moniker “Test” these days? Test cricket is called that because that’s what it is — a test. We think it’s an affront for sports like the rugbies and netball, as much as others less lofty, to award themselves the accolade. For hybrid events like AFL-GAA International Rules to call themselves “Tests” is a travesty.

Why is it that the British Bulldog crowd (Rugby League) and the mobile wrestlers (Rugby Union), with, arguably, more in common than Gaelic and Australian Rules football, don't play against each other? We've seen an increasing number of high-profile bulldogs (not just Canterbury/Bankstown!) cross to wrestling recently, mostly successfully it seems, so there's not an insurmountable gap between the codes skills wise.

On the other hand, we have only Jim Stynes, Tadhg Kennelly and Colm Begley who’ve succeeded at the highest level in aussie rules, the younger Stynes and two O’hAilpins who’ve stumbled and struggled, and a few more around the fringes. Have any Aussies gone to Dublin to tackle (;-)) Gaelic Football?

I’m sorry — I’m about to utter another heresy. The Internation Rules series is a crock that advances neither sport and only enriches, ever so slightly based on ratings, television channels. The chance that a team, in either code, could lose a crucial player for a season as a result of an injury sustained in a meaningless confection of a sport is too great. Let's just knock this unfortunate 'bastard' on the head and get on with our respective codes.