THE AFL met the Gaelic Athletic Association recently and discussed resurrecting the international rules series. It needn't have, it was played last night.

This is not a comment on Irishmen or mad on-field violence. It is not a comment on outside play and minimal contests. It is a comment on speed and flow.

This was a game that looked back through the window on the future the Irish game provided several years ago — without the violence.

These were arguably the two quickest sides in the league, teams that work that asset. They played the game as it has been constructed by the recent changes to be played, like the Irish game, a contest of almost constant motion.

This was a game essentially without key position. Save of course for the indomitable Dustin Fletcher, who plays any height and indeed last night on occasion had to man Jason Akermanis and Will Minson.

Having not fielded a side without a Matthew Lloyd or Scott Lucas in its number for 200 games, Essendon found assumptions hard to break.

Its first quarter was played as though they were there. It went forward clumsily, without purpose, adhering loosely to a game plan that required a large man to roam free wide and take marks. It did not have one. It had Jason Laycock.

Essendon has not had to consider a game without either forward in almost 10 years. More disarming was the idea that it had managed to win just two of the past 25 games played without Lloyd.

The Bulldogs played with an intensity and run unearthed at quarter time last week against St Kilda.

They pressed their numbers deep into the Dons defence and were allowed to remain unattended when they did so. At first.

The transition came in this match when Essendon opted to deny this luxury by holding its line in defence and waiting for the Dogs to return and kick over the top.

It is far from revolutionary football but they followed their men wherever they went. Fletcher commanded the ball from behind and shunted it to those of pace to run it through the corridor.

They opened their forward line and rather than attempt to kick long to a forward line absent of Lloyd or Lucas they held up and waited for the right choice. Adam McPhee presented but presenting and marking are two different things.

The Essendon return to the game was constructed on a confidence to back yourself and the skill to execute it. Consequently it was subject to the vagaries of those notions. It is a game the Bulldogs know better than Essendon and play better than Essendon. Besides that the effort of fighting back into the match appeared to take too significant a toll on Essendon's ability to hold on to the game in the last quarter.

The argument over whether Essendon would hurt more from the absence of Lloyd or Lucas was equally challenged by the Dogs' query over the impact of the injury to Scott West.

As the Dons busied around the packs in the middle quarters West's absence was keenly noted. Ryan Griffen and Adam Cooney compensated, and Akermanis played a game that raised a question of its own about whether he had been the ideal opportunist or something more, having had a hand in several more goals than those delivered from his boot.

Brad Johnson began the game on a wing and spent time in at centre bounces. Evidently this was intended to bring him into the game for, aside from his heroics in the final moments of his 300th game, his season has been poor. Admittedly they were some heroics.

In the second quarter he drifted forward again but only after laying a tackle deep in defence, gathering kicks across the middle and splicing three opponents in front of goal to run on and convert.

He is still to find his game but it was a return to something approximating it.