Youngest Wallace stoops to conquer

Gerry Thornley talks to the Ireland back row who might soon be recognised as a "world class" player

David, what's the story? Are ye comin' out?" inquired Ronan O'Gara from Australia.

David Wallace was just off a plane at Copenhagen airport, en route with the rest of the Irish squad to Poland for close-season training, and had switched on his mobile only moments before. At first he presumed O'Gara was having him on.

So Wallace slagged him back about his facial wounds, courtesy of some sustained punching from Duncan McRae in the Lions match with New South Wales.

"I'm seeing you in 24 hours, am I?" interrupted O'Gara again.

Then Wallace began to wonder whether O'Gara was homeward bound, that perhaps he had been found guilty of something when he appeared at McRae's disciplinary hearing.

"No, you're coming out," revealed O'Gara, who said he'd heard from a cameraman that Lawrence Dallaglio was heading home. But he then suddenly hung up and went off to check if it was true.

Peter Stringer, standing nearby, asked an ashen-faced Wallace what was wrong. "Ehm, that was Rog saying I'm going to Australia."

"Suddenly, before I knew it I was being carried on a king's chair as the lads sang Congratulations around Copenhagen airport."

Eventually, he sheepishly insisted that they let him down and he had Brian O'Brien verify the truth of it all. Half-an-hour later he was on a plane to Heathrow.

"I just had the biggest grin on my face you'd ever seen."

Part of his joy was knowing that he was completing a unique achievement: the Wallaces were the first set of three brothers to have played for the Lions. The burden of being the younger brother of two Lions might have weighed heavily on others, but not the most laid-back of them all.

"I think when Richie went out I was only about 16 and I didn't appreciate the enormity of it. Whereas when Paul went out that was just such an awesome tour, and the videos have since added more to the tour. That was the first time I realised how special it was.

"Myself and Richie watched the second Test in a pub in Kinsale, and I remember talking to Paul for about an hour on the phone afterwards. Then making it was just surreal."

But for the foot-and-mouth outbreak and a knee injury, we can only guess how his tour might have panned out. This weekend last year Wallace had helped Rob Henderson and Brian O'Driscoll to cut the French defence to shreds, and, fittingly, the three combined for Ireland's decisive if disputed try. A starring role in the championship and an original Lions squad place then seemed the least of it.

Instead, recuperating by the end of the season at about 60 per cent of his ability, he was called up to Australia. Rusty in his first game, he made a handsome, try-scoring contribution to the comeback win over the ACT Brumbies.

Why he wasn't on the bench as an impact replacement for any of the back row slots instead of the unused Martyn Williams has merely become even harder to understand following his performances since.

Wallace's exceptional combination of pace and upper body strength, as if the elder Wallaces were contrasting prototypes for the younger model, has led many players in the game here to deduce that Wallace is about the hardest player around to stop in the tackle.

One of Munster's part-time squad members emerged from a training session at Thomond Park last season with only one thing on his mind. "That hoor Wallace is impossible to stop," he concluded.

It is why he is one of Ireland's prime weapons today, and it is why Peter Clohessy recently nominated Wallace as one of the best players he's ever played with.

He's not far off, you sense, the description "world-class", though he still has only 10 caps. This is only his third season as a regular on the Munster team and a specialist number seven. Undoubtedly he's suffered for his versatility, becoming a jack of all back-row positions but master of none.

"It's great getting to play all those positions and being versatile, and getting your hands on the ball. But this has its drawbacks when you're not seen as a specific player," he says.

"When it comes to selection at international level people are looking for out-and-out opensides. I suppose it bothered me more a couple of years ago when things were struggling and I made the changeover to be an openside, or," he stops to chuckle self-deprecatingly, "trying to be an out-and-out seven. But maybe it would have been better to try and focus on one position a few years earlier."

Even now, his game is most effective off the ground than on it, in the manner of Kieron Dawson, Keith Gleeson or today's direct opponent, Neil Back.

He's often described as a number "six-and-a-half", or not an out-and-out openside, which - hold the back page - the softly-spoken Wallace actually admits annoys him a little bit.

"The way I run is kind of upright and that doesn't lend itself to people thinking that way either. I've been told about it loads of times but there's no point in changing it now."

He agrees that his work at the breakdown has improved this year, though he's reluctant to admit it.

"Because I'm sick of it in a way, but there is I suppose a bit of truth in it as well."

About a year ago he had a discussion with Declan Kidney about the issue, and Kidney told him to stop trying to conform to what others thought Wallace should be, and instead focus on his strengths.

That's always been the same. "Pick up the ball and run" were, he admits, his favourite words at Crescent Comprehensive, where he played mostly at number eight.

It was in that position he scored two tries to complete a memorable comeback win over the English under-21s in Greystones in 1996, when the Irish were coached by Eddie O'Sullivan and the English by Clive Woodward.

"The first one was at the back of a maul and so was more of a team try, and the other one was more of a poxy one at the end," he says, laughing again, and explains that from a routine pick-up and feed to his scrumhalf the English openside tracked the scrumhalf to leave big gaps for him to score under the posts.

"To score the winning try against England was something special alright."

One-nil to Fast Eddie then, and Wallace's respect for the Ireland coach is palpable.

"He's very good at getting his point across. He uses a lot of metaphors - he talks about having a firewall in front of us - and he's just very good at explaining things. His ideas are also very good.

"It's probably a little bit different at under-21s, but he was more of a teacher-pupil at that stage. That's the way I would have felt, but now I think he's more adaptable, he listens to what the players think and he's willing to change. It's not a dictatorship."

With Paul Wallace having completed a long, hard road back from 18 months out of Test rugby, there are a few promising auguries around; there is a link with the last win at Twickenham in 1994 in the form of Richie Wallace, who, indeed, gave the final pass for Simon Geoghegan's try. The youngest reckons he was left at home on his own that day, given Paul was playing with the Irish Students while brother Henry and his parents were in Twickenham.

"I probably had a party and got caught, it happened on a few occasions, because everyone knew when it was international time my parents were away," he laughs.

He is not, he reveals, as easy-going as he looks. "I couldn't be," he admits, and confirms that he has never been so nervous as he was before the Welsh game.

Today he goes mano a mano with Back, the first-choice openside on the last couple of Lions tours, though Wallace doesn't seem inclined to tug the forelock.

"I think he's one of the best. He's certainly very good, whether he's the best is hard to say. I played against him last year and things went all right. He's very good at getting into a tackle situation and getting on the ball. He's also a great linkman. Just hisexperience mainly, and it's rare that he has a bad game."

Wallace is wary of over-confidence, pointing out that the team which was hosed two years ago travelled with the conviction that it was going to be their year too.

"You can be too over-confident going to Twickenham too," he says guardedly. "I guess we'll know where Ireland stands after the match."

And further proof of where Dave Wallace stands too.