Johnny Watterson talks to David Wallace who has come in from the cold after a hard two seasons

It was a mellow gathering in Killiney. Eddie O'Sullivan announced the team for the first Six Nations match and there were no quibbles. Not a ripple or a sigh. Jerry Flannery in at hooker. Yes, fine. Tommy Bowe on the wing. Good, lovely Ulster lad. David Wallace in the back row. Wonderful, finally.

Wallace has been the figure missing in recent years that, aside from the David Humphreys or Ronan O'Gara saga, has caused the Irish coach to engage in more discussions than anyone else. Wallace, like the two outhalves, has a fan club. Admirers.

People who love his on-pitch athleticism and off-pitch equanimity, his ball carrying and sacking of opponents and his offhand dismissal of anything he believes flatters too much. He's not a personality to allow anything rock him from his centre, not even the positive clamour that has followed each of his performances since before Christmas.

"It (praise) was great but it had its down sides," he says, almost whispering. "People saying he should be in or he shouldn't be in the team. You can get distracted by looking at yourself and saying why am I not in the team? You could fall into the trap of buying into all of that. It's hype. It's great people say it to you but you need to look at yourself as well."

It has been a hard two seasons and when he thinks back it is to the season of 2004 that he last played in a Six Nations Championship match. He scored a try that day but since, and despite inclusion in the Irish team tours to Japan last summer and South Africa before that, it has a been a struggle to find the formula that allowed him make such an impact in his earlier international days.

"I suppose it has been a difficult couple of years in terms of form and selection," he says. "I never gave up hope of making it back into the Irish team. It was just going to take a lot of hard work on my game to do that. Thankfully the season has gone quite well. I've tried to keep the head down and keep the form up.

"I worked on areas that needed work on. But I took the view that I needed to improve them all rather than just work on certain things. There were a couple of years where I wasn't happy with my form. I couldn't say why or why not I was playing as well as I'd have liked to. I looked back to those early days when I was playing for Ireland to see how things went. I feel that maybe I'm back close to something like that and a few years older and more experienced."

Sport works in mysterious ways. In the autumn International series Anthony Foley would have captained the Irish side had Simon Easterby's injury not healed up. Foley, for now, is out of the squad. London wasps' number seven, Johnny O'Connor, might have thought his place was not under too much pressure. First Irish try and all that before Christmas. But O'Sullivan shakes incense on the altar of form and in recent performances with Munster, Wallace has beaten off the competitors, notably Leinster's Keith Gleeson, with a more developed openside flanker game. The coach puts it succinctly.

"David has forced his way in. There will be a lot of close quarter and hand-to-hand combat. He wasn't picked in the autumn but since then has got better and better," says O'Sullivan.

The recent game against Sale Sharks in the Heineken Cup was one of the picks, a timely performance from the Garryowen flanker.

"Last year I wasn't playing that many games at the start of the season. It was just a difficult season," he explains. "Thankfully the second half went much better but the damage was done at that stage in terms of getting into the Irish team. It's hard to know how much the shoulder (injury) affects you. When I originally hurt it and played out the season not knowing how bad it was, the form was dropping all the time. It was hard to regain that. Thankfully that changed half way through last season and then this season."

Wallace was also tried as a winger with Munster. "I don't think I touched the ball for the second half (on the wing). It's nice to try out and add strings to your bow but it's something you need to work on quite a bit to make a go of it. I suppose I just don't have the time at this stage."