JOHNNY WATTERSONmeets the winger who was in primary school the last time Ireland won in Paris – and who drew a picture of one of O'Driscoll's tries

BY NOW the expectation would have been that the humdrum realities of professional rugby would have begun to erode the dreams of Keith Earls; all the boyhood ambition and hopes, one by one, broken and bruised by the daily grind.

Earls played against world champions South Africa in November, only to be dropped for the opening Six Nations match last week against Italy. Just as quickly, he was championed back on to the starting team for Ireland’s toughest match of the series, in Paris.

Distress and exhilaration are always close bed fellows. But Earls gives no hint that life at the mercy of the selection process has worn him down.

“I still pinch myself,” he says of starting.

Now, courtesy of an injury to Andrew Trimble’s “tweaked” hamstring he is being handed the chance to dampen French spirits in one of the hottest grounds in the world.

“It was tough,” he adds of being benched after the Springbok win. “I thought I was in with a good chance after playing against South Africa and Fiji. I suppose moving in to 13 with Munster didn’t really help. Trimble has been in great form, he scored a great individual try against Bath and he’s just been brilliant. He deserved a run, to be honest with you.

“It was tough from my side but playing 13 . . . it’s going to be hard to go on the wing.”

In the past Earls was something of a worrier. He’d look at the player opposite him, someone he’d have watched on television and wonder how he was going to match him. He doubted whether he was quicker or stronger or whether he was up to beating him.

His energies dissipated in the swathe of anxiety that gripped him and he occasionally stepped into a match needlessly fraught with self-doubt. He has lightened.

“I actually don’t care who I come up against any more,” he says with a tilt of his head. “I just concentrate on myself and my own game. If I just do the basics right . . . you can only worry about yourself. If you are thinking negative thoughts . . . I’ve been working a lot with Gerry Hussey (sports psychologist). He’s brilliant. He gets me to think about the positives – the first catch, the first pass, just building into the game and not trying to do something special straight away.

“I’ve been watching a video on YouTube of Maradona before warm-ups and you see him doing all these skills and playing to the crowd. He was so relaxed, it was cruel, like. He’s well able to perform under pressure so you kind of look at that and think, ‘jeez, just go out and relax and be myself and everything will be all right’.”

At 22, Earls is the baby of the squad, but from a tough part of Limerick and playing in a bruising Munster team they know he can manage himself. This is his first time starting in a Six Nations match and his first time facing the French at Stade de France.

His recollection of recent Irish defeats is sharp but when Brian O’Driscoll scored his hat- trick there in 2000 in Ireland’s last French-soil win, Earls was still in primary school.

“I remember watching it at home and I remember going into school on the Monday,” he says. “I think I was in fifth or sixth class. I remember drawing a picture of Brian scoring a try and having three French fellas crying in it.”

It seems as good an image as any to carry over to the St Denis suburb and even playing out of position few contend Earls softens the Ireland team. Trimble may be bigger and stronger but the lighter model and whiz of Earls brings its own threat. He has also been to France with Munster and against the odds beaten their top club.

“It’s a tough place to go but I’ve a bit of experience with the Heineken Cup playing against Perpignan. Definitely, you can go there with confidence because before we played Perpignan I think they’d lost only one in 28 games. We just had to have our own mentality that we were going to win and try and beat them up. We said, ‘We can’t just go down there and leave them come at us’.

“I know it has been a good few years since we won in Paris but I think we just have to go out there and get a good start. In the last couple of years we let France get a couple of scores up and then we had to fight back.”

It’s no humdrum game. Then Earls is no humdrum player.