Bishop may answer our prayers

HE'S got the strut, he's got the blonde streaks, he's got the accent, he's got that same top of the ground running style. Comparisons with Simon Geoghegan are inevitable but far from odious for Jason Bishop.

He's also clearly a bit of a character - young and cocky with it - but not in an obnoxious way.

There have been a couple of lovely moments in training already. Blamed for spilling a pass and obliged to do the compulsory press ups which go with it, Bishop kept muttering his innocence.

On another occasion, he sat alone drinking Gatorade as the session ended, oblivious to the kicking and catching practice which every other back was partaking in. "Are you finished then, Jason?" inquired Ashton with a hint of sarcasm.

"I don't really know him (Geoghegan) to be honest," admits Bishop, "but Conor (O'Shea) and the boys say I'm quite similar to him." Does he mind? "No, not at all."

Here could be another Irish star in the making. Certainly, you could well envisage the Lansdowne Road crowd taking to Bishop in a big way.

Midfield has been something of a desert for Irish rugby in recent times but Bishop's partnership with Rob Henderson, his house mate in London and roommate in Whangerei, promises something a bit different. Natural foils off the pitch, their as yet untried pairing on it would appear to be complimentary as well Henderson the crash ball inside battering ram, Bishop the dynamic outside runner.

Relaxing in their room, the pair consider this and can scarcely recall when they formed a midfield partnership before.

Where this 22 year old, second generation Irishman differs from Geoghegan is that Bishop has been reconverted from a speedster on the wing to a centre. "I've always been a centre but the way I play is quite elusive so I've often been put on the wing."

"He (Bishop) couldn't get a place in the centre," chides Henderson, who also struggles to remember the times they played together before his move to Wasps this season.

But it looks ready to order. "People have said that but we'll just have to wait and see," says Bishop.

Time will indeed tell, beginning with Thursday's Irish Development Tour opener against Northland.

It has been a circuitous route toward wearing the green for Bishop. Reared in East Grinstead, a small town near Gatwick where he played minirugby on Sundays. Bishop joined London Irish when he was 13, primarily because his mother, Gillian, comes from Hollywood in Belfast.

He admits the thought of one day playing for Ireland never crossed his mind in his formative rugby years. "No, not really. I was more England orientated, only because it was an English school and everything was to do with England. I didn't really think about England to be honest but my grandad played for Ireland at rugby and stuff like that so there was that thing in the back of my mind."

His grandfather's name was Dunn - Bishop can't remember his first name - though the bloodline goes deeper than that. "Stuff like that" transpires as "my great uncle, Irwin, and his son were the first president and vice president of the IRFU, so there's another connection there. I've got it in a book somewhere at home."

Bishop broke into the London Irish team three seasons ago and played three times with the Irish under 21s alongside the likes of fellow Development squad members Kieran Dawson and Brian O'Meara. Even then, however, there was a tug of war between his country of birth and that of his rugby playing ancestry which, ironically, was sparked by his coach and friend at London Irish, Clive Woodward.

"He asked me to play for the England under 21s and so I did, against Italy. But there was a bit of pressure from the club and then I got this call up so things have just gone from there.

"I was quite good friends with Clive. As a backs' coach, unbelievable. He's just like Brian Ashton; a totally different way of thinking. You look at Bath now. They play great stuff and it's due to Clive. I know not many people in Ireland liked him but just as a backs' coach he was sensational."

So was the former London Irish coach essentially antiIrish?

"Maybe, I don't know, but as a backs' coach he was the best."

The coming of Brian Ashton and the timing of this tour could hardly have been better for Bishop. Ashton watched the inform Bishop three times toward the end of the season and was as impressed by his threat on the wing, to his blotting out of Will Carling against Harlequins in the centre, to his man of the match display against Leicester.

"He's a very good tackler as well," Ashton points out.

But it is Ashton's emphasis on a more expansive, running game - with forwards intermingling with backs and the point of attack switching rapidly 40 yards across field - which clearly excites Bishop.

"The brand of rugby suits me down to a T, so I'm just going to take it from there and take each game as it come. I'm not going to look too far ahead."

But one day, hopefully surely

Bishop will line up at Lansdowne Road. With a striking honesty, he doesn't attempt to overplay the green card. Were the Lansdowne Road crowd to ask "who is this guy?" he'd say: "Well, I'm Irish, aren't I? Well, my mother is, so I play with all the heart of an Irish person. It's professionalism now, y'know."