Wallace: Ireland feel penalty frustration

PENALTIES. Bloody penalties. The players are sick talking about them, the media are equally fed up having to ask about them. Then David Wallace walks into the room and everyone knows there is only one road the conversation is going to take.

Wallace has been guilty of conceding only two of the 37 penalties that Ireland have shipped in their opening three Six Nations games but, as the side’s openside flanker, he tends to be in the vicinity when most of the crimes are committed.

The side’s plague of indiscipline has morphed into the soundtrack of the tournament to date, to such an extent that 12 of the 20 minutes Wallace spent with the print press on Thursday afternoon in Carton House were consumed by the issue.