It's lucky Ireland coach Pete McGrath is not a punter.If he was he would give his team no chance of winning the Foster's International Rules series against Australia on Friday night where his team faces a near impossible task to recover from last Friday's record 36 point loss in the first Test in Perth.With the series being decided on aggregate points Ireland needs to win the second Test in Melbourne by at least 37 points to retain the trophy won in such emphatic fashion in Ireland last year.McGrath admitted immediately after last Friday's first Test that the series was virtually over but his mood has improved considerably in the week leading up to the second Test."If I was a betting man I would say the series is out of reach but I am not a betting man,' he said on Thursday, ahead of the second Test at Telstra Dome."But where there is life there is hope - they beat us by 36 points and certainly we can beat them by 37.""One thing about sport, it's unpredictable - if we all knew here this morning that the series was dead it would be a poor comment on our approach generally.'However McGrath said his team would have to make a vast improvement on last Friday night's showing to have any chance of recovering in Melbourne after the Irish coach admitted his team "lost its way" in Perth."We were taken by surprise (by the Australian) team, we didn't drop our heads but we were floundering."The Irish were not only surprised by Australia's superior tackling skills, an area where Australia normally has the biggest advantage in the hybrid game, but by Australia's more efficient use of the interchange bench and most of all the home team's superior kicking skills with the round ball - the area of the game where Ireland normally has the biggest advantage."You would have to say last Friday night our inability to tackle and the effectiveness of the Australian tackling, those two things were in stark contrast," he said."In relation to the round ball we would concede that Australia's kicking last Friday night was superior to ours because uncharacteristically we had 13 one pointers that normally would have been 10 or 11 three pointers."Australia's greater use of the interchange - 15 changes to three in the first term alone - also meant their players were constantly fresher in what is a non-stop running game with McGrath admitting the Irish had been caught off-guard by Australian coach Kevin Sheedy's renowned tactical nous in that area."Our interchange was based purely on perception," he said."We had no pre-determined blueprint to actually deal with the interchange but we have had a long hard look at it (since) and come up with a system that will facilitate a more effective use of that strategy."McGrath denied Ireland had been complacent going into last week's first Test against the inexperienced Australian line-up but promised his team would be far more competitive in Melbourne."This week there has been a better degree of intensity in our training because last week we were unable to match the intensity or the power of the Australians,' he said."Anyone who looked at (last week's) match would say Ireland needs to play with a lot more urgency and a lot more pace to compete meaningfully tomorrow night and we tried to get that pace and urgency into the training we did during the week."