THIRD TIME lucky walks into the room and a platoon cluster around. Against Italy it was 33 minutes before Peter Stringer, and then Gordon D’Arcy, replaced him as his face and then bandages began to leak. In Croke Park he lasted 49 minutes against France before D’Arcy charged into the game again, the jinxed Paddy Wallace led away like a figure from the George A Romero gore fest Diary of The Dead. Would he ever be back, we thought.

Wallace, a lucky man. Wallace, the calamitous centre.

What rugby players despise is being asked to explain emotions and consequences. What makes them uncomfortable are inquiries that might undermine, or be seen to question, their confidence in a game that is wholly based on confidence. In that context, the narrow funnel beside the scrum where Wallace and Ronan O’Gara will picket on Saturday is going to be juggernaut super highway.

Worsley, Easter, Sheridan, Borthwick and other fun buses, they will make it a busy lane and the man in the chair with the mulberry eye and the rucked skin from the sutures, will not be expected to flinch. “In rugby these days they’ll obviously target that 10-12 channel,” says Wallace flatly. “It’s probably the easiest place to develop go-forward ball, regardless of who’s playing in those positions, so Ronan and myself . . . I’m sure they’ll be coming at us and we’ll be prepared for that.”

But will England try to cynically exploit your injury, Wallace is asked. “That’s up to them,” he replies with an air of finality. It’s a professional game, isn’t that what happens, he is pressed.

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t know what goes on at the bottom of some rucks . . . ” he says. “I think I’ll get rid of the head gear this week and just go out. A bit of Vaseline should do the trick . . . hopefully.

“You wouldn’t expect it to happen over the course of three years never mind consecutive weeks. It’s very frustrating. There was an element of bad luck to it but that’s rugby, that’s sport. You just have to roll with it. I’ve been given another opportunity to tog out again this week and hopefully, I can back up Declan’s decision.”

Wallace is being trusted by Kidney. Views from outside the camp were that the nasty face injuries were simply giving D’Arcy more time to cement his old position. It would have been unfair to a clever player but, like Malcolm O’Kelly, he would have been asked to roll with it, had the coach judged otherwise.

For now, the game relationship with O’Gara inside and Brian O’Driscoll outside has been choked and England may look on it as Wallace being the callow partner. But the lesser-known Ireland centre may alternatively provide an element of surprise in Croke Park.

“I’m not too worried. We’ve trained in the majority of all the sessions together as a three, so we’ve developed that relationship during training,” he explains. “Match time, you can’t replicate that so I suppose given the opportunity to play 80 minutes, that will improve as well. But I’ll be very confident with the relationship we’ve struck up at training and the few minutes on the pitch we’ve played together that we’re working on something pretty good. Maybe with teams analysed so deeply now and the fact that I haven’t been on the pitch so much to be analysed too much . . . you could take a positive out of that. England will have done their homework.”

For Wallace, this is a chance to look in late in a career that has promised more than it has delivered at international level. He turns 30 in August, just six months younger than the 90-capped Brian O’Driscoll, with whom he won the Under-19 World Youth Championship in France back in 1998, scoring a try in the final. But between David Humphreys in Ulster and O’Gara at Ireland level, his outhalf outings have been numbered. As a centre, D’Arcy and O’Driscoll seemed immovable and since his inclusion in senior Irish squads from 2002, he has won just 14 caps.

“I know my role playing at 12 in an Irish team is to bring other players into the game and be a second playmaker with Ronan,” he says. “Probably I haven’t had that opportunity on too many occasions in the first two Tests.”

Lucky breaks, the players will say, are everything. Wallace has survived a double mauling to step on to the pitch tomorrow. Maybe, finally, third time is lucky.