KEY POINTS:
Ireland and British Lions captain Brian O'Driscoll has called for fewer mid-year tours - but maybe more to New Zealand and Australia.
The Irish ended a draining campaign which started in February with the annual Six Nations championship in Europe with a one-off test against Australia in Melbourne last night.
In reality, though, Ireland, like most countries, have been going non-stop for a lot longer than that because of last year's World Cup in France in September-October.
O'Driscoll said the scheduling demands were taking a toll on players and he urged the game's powerbrokers to review the situation.
"What I would say for future reference is that - and I'm certainly not getting on about complaining about the length of this season - but common sense has to prevail a little bit," he said.
"Maybe the year of a World Cup, there shouldn't be summer tours because you're going to find players who are playing in a 52-week season or 53-week season are going to struggle with injuries the following season.
"You'll see that come September, October, when we do our next pre-season and guys are still a little fatigued.
"I just think that perhaps people need to look at that for future reference - and I'm only just saying one summer in four years not to have any summer tours. I'm sure the game won't suffer too much for that."
As it is, the game's image is suffering because of the tours, with most Northern Hemisphere nations these days more often than not sending understrength squads to Australia.
It happened last year with Wales and even South Africa for the Tri-Nations tournament and it will happen again this month when the French arrive with a second-string line-up for two tests against the Wallabies.
O'Driscoll, though, would relish the chance to play the Wallabies and All Blacks more.
"I like the idea of getting to play New Zealand and Australia as many times as I can because more often than not, they're in the top three or four sides in the world and it's a chance to play against some of the best players," he said.
"So the more often you can do that, the better."
