The Telstra Dome is quite an arena — a vast playing surface, yet still an intense atmosphere — but Brian O’Driscoll will hardly rank it as his favourite spot in world rugby. In 2001, he saw a Lions Test series flip direction on a wayward pass by Jonny Wilkinson. Two years later, Ireland’s best chance of a World Cup semi-final slipped away on a David Humphreys drop-goal attempt that stayed to the right.

And now this. It was not, granted, a fixture of a significance to equal the two above but important for the Ireland captain in another sense. He’s running out of opportunities to win something down here. To say he is looking his age doesn’t seem right because he is only 29. In terms of service to the cause, however, he is getting on — this is his 10th season of Test rugby and it is starting to show. Yesterday there were two moments in particular.

The first followed that wonderful catch of Berrick Barnes’s cross-kick, a catch that had the Aussie Rules fans actually paying attention. What grabbed our attention was his failure to scorch away and score. The reverse camera showed the covering Barnes had the angle on O’Driscoll. A few years ago, no-one would have got close to him. Likewise, he appeared to finish his try like a man wading through treacle and it was only his marvellous dexterity that saved the score.

His exhortations in the pre-match huddle betrayed a certain impatience and frustration. As if there wasn’t enough motivation to win, the tourists had been provided with shabby training facilities all week and were then offered a derisory time-slot for their team-run at the Telstra Dome on Friday, which they turned down.

More annoying, however, would have been the recurring suggestion, both from the Wallabies and their media, that Ireland provided a threat only through their “physicality” — a word we heard a lot of all week. It was as if to suggest the tourists had barely moved on from the days when the Aussies would speak patronisingly about Irish pride and passion.

O’Driscoll is respected out here. They spotted him as something special when he made his debut in Brisbane in 1999 and had it confirmed when he scored that try, also in Brisbane, with the Lions two years later. But he knows they’ll only really respect you if you beat them out here — it’s as if they don’t really count those waterlogged defeats in Lansdowne Road. As Paul O’Connell put it during the week, Ireland’s run of defeats down here “has gone beyond a joke”. Most of all, O’Driscoll wanted to beat them playing ball. To have tried and failed won’t be enough. And that was the really frustrating bit.

“Very frustrating,” O’Driscoll said afterwards. “We’d a lot of possession. We can’t say we didn’t have our opportunities, because we did. We lacked a bit of that clinical touch at times and we were made pay for it. The couple of tries we conceded in the first half, we probably didn’t make them work enough for them. They came to them very easily. You know, when you’re dogging it out, working so hard, it’s soul-destroying when you give up easy tries like that. But we hung in there and we gave ourselves a chance to try and snatch it at the end. It’s something we’d talked about, wanting to play an 80 or 90-minute performance. It was certainly that.

“Unfortunately, there were lots of last passes and when you’re playing sides like the Wallabies they have to go to hand. Little pops here and there which went to deck — on another day, they might have stuck and that’s where the frustration lay. We still managed to score a nice try in that second half, which got us back into the game, but for the amount that we created it was a small return.”

So ends a hugely unfulfilling season for Ireland, which goes much deeper than the simple stat of five wins from 13 Tests in 12 months. The best chance of dredging themselves above eighth in the world rankings is by beating Argentina at Croke Park in November — the third game that month for Ireland but Argentina’s first after a long gap.

In the meantime, you go searching for positives from a mini-tour and they are pretty thin on the ground. O’Driscoll paid tribute to Rob Kearney, who has answered all questions on the full-back issue and was a pleasure to watch. Jamie Heaslip wasn’t far behind, while Paddy Wallace will have benefited, even though yesterday’s performance was a couple of steps back after Wellington. The biggest disappointment was that we still haven’t seen O’Driscoll and Luke Fitzgerald play together in midfield.

In the end, Declan Kidney learnt more from what he did between Monday and Friday of last week and team manager-in-waiting Paul McNaughton said Kidney would be able to put it to use sooner rather than later. “It’s been a productive trip,” said McNaughton yesterday. “We’ve met a lot of people, both in terms of learning about the Experimental Law Variations and also in terms of completing our coaching team. There is no pressure to announce that team but we do know who we want. Obviously there’s a bit to go on it yet, as we have to talk contracts and availability but we’re going back to the IRFU to discuss our proposals.”

He is unlikely to learn much by consulting his stand-in, Michael Bradley. After yesterday’s game, Bradley struggled to see beyond the disappointment of two narrow defeats. “It wouldn’t have been too much of an exaggeration to say we could easily be sitting here with two wins, one against New Zealand and one against Australia,” said Bradley, “if we were just accurate in doing what we were capable of doing on the pitch. So the overriding feeling is disappointment.

“You can have those heartfelt, gallant losses. When I was touring here \ that’s what we were getting. The bar has been raised but the wins have not come and to be honest, it’s probably not acceptable any more.”

No kidding, Mike.