Lion-hearted Wallace gives warm praise the cold shoulder

A number of times in the conversation David Wallace gently warns "you have to keep perspective". The Irish number seven has been persecuted with praise over the last five days. As though he had suddenly reinvented himself as the powerfully athletic wing forward to whom a nation had once been blind, Wallace this week has had to step over strangers burning josh sticks at his feet.

For a large man, Wallace can negotiate such moves over supplicants with alarming ease, and although the cross-field trigonometry involved in the stalking and bringing down of Welsh winger Shane Williams last Saturday framed Wallace as something of an openside raptor, he has been promising such a team performance as well as the cameo role for some time.

It has been a question of when rather than if for the 25-year-old, who this summer neatly closed the family circle as he followed brothers Richard and Paul into a Lions jersey. Being the third brother to be crowned may, indeed, be the root of his humility.

For the vibe emanating from Wallace is of an old world "all in good time" patience, a warm glow rather than a raging fire. More comfortable detailing his weaknesses than his strengths in the Welsh match, Wallace's on-pitch dynamism is equally matched by an off-court murmuring reticence. His beguiling summing up of last week is of a player ludicrously underwhelmed by the breadth of his glorification.

"I'd a bit of ball in my hands and was able to do a bit of running, which was great," he says. "I was pretty happy to get that winger (Williams) as well. It was touch and go for a while. Didn't know whether I would get him or not."

It was, of course, the manner of downing Williams as much as the act itself. Wallace ran cross-field at an angle as the lighter player gathered speed down the left wing. A hint of a shift in direction from Williams forced the bigger man to arrest his attacking speed. Williams, believing that was sufficient to leave the hulking forward flat-footed, accelerated. Wallace did too. He was able to. And Williams was flicked into touch like a fag end.

"There were other aspects of my game which I wasn't happy with," he says. "A couple of times I took the ball up and my angle wasn't right. A couple of times in the tackle they got away, although I think that could have been due to my sore shoulder. I think I may have been holding back. Little things. Perhaps I may have given away a penalty too.

"Yeah, there was a bit of hype about the way I played. Ten out of 10 rating in a newspaper? That's what I mean. You've got to keep things in perspective."

Wallace first felt the heat of the Welsh match hype in the Sunday papers. It cooled, and then, after morning training on Tuesday, when the team to face England was announced, he was summoned outside to the front of the West Stand to face a series of interviews. At the end of it he was carefully manhandled out to the team bus with three frowning national newspapers twittering their disapproval that they couldn't get a slice of him.

David Humphreys won man of the match and articulately fills press notebooks, while captain Keith Wood is always sought out for his comfort in front of cameras and microphones. Along with Brian O'Driscoll, who is increasingly more accommodating, those have been the three front line faces. This week Wallace joined them and watched the three amble away as he, a solitary figure at the end, dealt with the media scrum.

As much as his discovery of form, his shoulder remains the other more pestering issue, and against England on Saturday that could become a factor. Facing an injury-struck English back row of Richard Hill, Neil Back and Martin Corry, even a heroic Wallace cannot go into the match carrying a damaged body. Having sat out this week, the injury is far from a straightforward matter.

"I got a knock in a ruck. It's a bit like a dead arm. It came from behind and got twisted. Now I'm restricted to how I can move it. The prognosis is good and they are confident it will be alright. I'm going on what the medical staff are telling me and that's bursitis. They are saying that it should be fine.

"I couldn't afford at this stage to get a knock. That would set it back. But yes, it is frustrating . . . frustrating to come off that game (Wales) with the shoulder and knowing there is a big match coming up."

Bursitis, or an inflammation of the bursa, small sacs located between the bone and moving structures such as muscle, skin and tendon, is what currently restricts Wallace to the training bench. The pain and the stiffness is aggravated by movement and at this stage risk management becomes part of the equation in trying to award the Munster player his seventh international cap.

For his talent, it seems a frightfully insufficient number of Irish outings. But the season since the beginning of this year has been a duel with injury and Irish flanker Kieron Dawson.

Last February Wallace was selected for the Six Nations match against France. In the intervening period, foot-and-mouth stretched the season out of shape, and when a friendly against Romania arrived in May, he was just returning from injury. Dawson was picked to play, played well and found himself in possession for the doomed assault on Murrayfield almost four weeks ago.

For Wallace the luck has gone full circle. Picked for the Lions, a target he quietly, if extravagantly set for himself three years ago when he hadn't yet been selected for Munster, and dropped by Ireland, his cast-iron attitude has been a useful rudder.

Focus now is Team Ireland and how to ratchet up the pressure without leaking or blowing a seam.

"I think we gave it everything in terms of effort against Wales," he says politely, tiring of his bursitis. "In terms of being a little bit more clinical, I think there was room for improvement there. We need to be on top of everything if we want to compete and beat England . . . need to hold on to our own ball, steal a few of theirs."

Phrased without complication. Wallace will not so much pass on the hype as watch it drift by and out of sight without much mourning. Everything is, as always, unruffled, kept in perspective.