Wallace intent on giving Irish fans Twickers treat

KEEN rivals in their days at Crescent Comprehensive and PBC, David Wallace and new Irish captain Ronan O’Gara have since become teammates and buddies, having enjoyed many great days together with Munster and Ireland.

There is deep mutual respect between them although Wallace admits to amusement that O’Gara should have spoken earlier this week about the time he led Pres to a Munster Senior Schools Cup win over Crescent in 1995 without mentioning the outcome when the sides met in the previous year.

“The first I remember of Ronan was a Junior Cup game I was watching between Pres and Munchins“, Wallace recalled. “He was slotting drop goals and kicking penalties from everywhere. The next time was — and he probably didn’t mention this — when we beat Pres in the ‘94 senior final. In ‘the ‘95 final, we missed 10, 11 or 12 kicks at goal. Yeah, I was captain, but no, I didn’t take any.”

At Twickenham tomorrow, the pair are hoping to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Danny Cipriani, now deemed good enough to displace Johnny Wilkinson as England’s number ten. They both know Cipriani from the Munster-London Wasps Heineken Cup games before and after Christmas.

“I thought he was a very capable young fellow,” said Wallace. ”A lot of us would have played against Jonny, so Cipriani brings a little bit of the unknown to the table. And it will be different from the Munster game because internationals are always different, aren’t they? He seems to be level-headed. Some guys come in and you don’t know if they are going to be mentally strong, but he seems to have that.”

Having capped a fine display against France with a superbly taken try and as one of the stars of the win over Scotland, Wallace appeared unsuited to the tactical strategy adopted against Wales.

“It was very disappointing“, he says. “I didn’t get into the game as much as I would have liked. It just seemed to be a tighter game and that doesn’t really suit me. I think it will be a different scenario this time and I’ll get a bit of space and get a bit of ball in hand.

“I looked a bit like Quasimodo after the last time we played England at Twickenham. I got a lot of ball that day alright, but I also got a broken nose and a cut lip and whatever. I’m not sure who gave me the broken nose, but it always seems the first time I touch the ball against England that I come out with a bloody nose. The cut lip was my own fault, I got a line-out wrong and ended up getting a boot in the face from one of my own players.”

We won’t know until well into the game whether Ireland will be as up for tomorrow’s game as they normally would be with the “auld enemy” in their sights. David Wallace is confident in that regard, while also appreciating that the opposition also have a lot to prove after their equally poor display against Scotland. Then there’s the very appetising prospect of inflicting a fifth successive defeat on the English. Shouldn’t that be motivation in itself?

“I suppose we could be in an unprecedented situation with four wins, but we’re not letting history cloud it,” Wallace insists. “We’ve had a tough campaign up to now. If we win at the weekend, we will have salvaged something from this championship and so we have to go out and try to do that.

“Obviously England at home is going to be a tough challenge, but we’ve done it a couple of times and we have got to use that as a confidence booster. They haven’t kicked on from being in the World Cup final and I suppose that’s the thing about England, you don’t know what way they are going to do it on the day.

“It’s unfortunate that it’s a dead rubber, but I wouldn’t say it has gone drastically wrong for us. We were only about an inch away from it being a good campaign so far if Shane (Horgan) had got that try against Wales. That would have put a totally different complexion on everything. We played a tight game, we were faced with a blitz defence and the breeze was swirling. It was the way we decided to play and it certainly worked for 20 minutes, but we got stuck in a rut after that. As for introducing a Plan B, it’s easier said than done. There’s a cloud over you, when you lose a game like that. I don’t want to get bogged down on last week. I want to move on to the England game and hopefully we’ll play a better standard of rugby and more things will go our way. We know it’s difficult to go to Twickenham. My first two appearances there were the Heineken Cup final and a game against England and we lost them both. Winning there the last time was great for me, because it broke that run.”

Wallace has sympathy for his coach, as he endures a level of pressure that would have crushed many others, but, he stresses that the players are under their own pressures as well.

“We know what a good coach Eddie is. We trust him and will stick with him. Some of the criticism has been over the top, but it’s the same for the players, too, you know.”