THE Irish are in Wyndham and are confident they can take home their second Australian Football International Cup when the series kicks off in Warrnambool today.

The Ireland team trained at Westbourne Grammar School ground on Monday night with the players going through centre clearance drills and tackling formations.

Captain Ian O'Sullivan said the Irish team is the strongest they have brought over to Australia since the cup began in 2002.

"We're a confident bunch I think," O'Sullivan said.

"We've been down here for the last week or so and we did some good sessions down there. We had a match against Old Collegians and we had a good result against them."

O'Sullivan said some of the players had struggled to adapt from Gaelic football to the Australian game.

"A lot of us play [Gaelic] football as well. So we all play the running game," he said. "It does take a lot of work to adapt to it, a couple of the boys are quite new to the game. We've got a couple of guys who have only played for six months."

O'Sullivan plays for the Leeside Lions, based in Cork City, back home and has been playing Australian rules football for seven years.

"I've been playing for seven or eight years so it takes a while and the kicking style is competely different," he said. "When I went back to playing Gaelic football, I couldn't kick the ball straight because I hadn't played in years.

"I was trying to kick straight and the ball was skewing off right and left. I have a rugby background and it's the perfect mix for me."

He said Australian rules was struggling to attract numbers at home because the two seasons - Gaelic and Australian rules - clashed on the sporting calendar.

"You'd think it would be blooming, but it's always a struggle with the Gaelic football because [of] the seasons run together," he said.

"But it's going OK."