He's back and it feels good. Richard Wallace Mark II. A little older now and a little wiser too. It's funny to think of the bespectacled Wallace as the second oldest in this Irish team and the second most experienced. Yet, come Saturday afternoon and his 26th cap will be like his first. "Yes," he agrees, "only sweeter."

The 14 months since his last cap against Western Samoa must have seemed like an age, for he says it was "a year and a half ago." Then he quips: "I keep wearing the jersey just to remind me."

"There were moments when I was a bit unsure," he admits, but in fact, what he did was forget about Ireland as best he could. "I decided to refocus just on a professional contract with Saracens.

The job was just to play well there and maintain my position as a firsts' wing. I suppose just adopting that kept me going and kept me focussed."

The perception of Saracens is of a mega-rich club infiltrated by famous journeymen out to make one last financial killing before heading off into the sunset - both Michael Lynagh and Philippe Sella will retire at the end of this season. Anything but though, listening to Wallace.

"It's been a great experience since I first went there. It's really such a brilliant club. We really call ourselves a family now rather than a club." Indeed, it's a term which even the worldly Sella, with his record 111 caps behind him, uses. "We are one family at Saracens and we all respect each other," says the Frenchman.

Wallace refers to Sella, Lynagh and player coach Francois Pienaar as "superstars" but the point is that at Saracens there are no superstars. They don't look for or receive special treatment. The team that trains and plays together also socialises together.

"They're just down to earth individuals. I sort of expected Philippe to be a typically, let's not say arrogant, but let's say it anyway, arrogant Frenchman. But he turned out to be anything but. He's one of the most decent guys I've ever met in my life."

Most of all, it seems, Wallace learned how to rest, for Sella especially is the Rip Van Winkle of the Saracens squad. "The main difference is that you have genuine rest time even if you train twice a day. Beforehand you would work in between and then you'd have to train again. What you would get out it in the evenings, well, you might as well not have bothered. When Philippe came to the club he rested more and slept much more than anyone else I'd ever known in my life. That's the secret to his success."

Wallace has also listened and learned from the game's most capped player. "He's the sort of guy who if you want to learn from then he's more than willing to accommodate you. Plenty of us have learned from him, as we have from Michael and Francois."

A better player? The proof will be in the pudding of course, and some of a somewhat sceptical Irish audience will remain unconvinced about our expatriate players until then. But Wallace has been in a rich vein of form, scoring 11 tries this season at almost a try per game in an injury disrupted campaign, after an impressive haul of nine league tries last season.

"I think I am. It's very hard to say. Improvement is so gradual it's hard to quantify it. I certainly feel more confident about my ability now. I feel sure about what I want to do on the pitch and what are the right things and the wrong things. Confidence is high and the ability to deal with pressure situations is probably better than it was because the intensity of the game there (England) is probably higher than I've ever had before on a week-in, week-out basis. That's about it really. It's largely about confidence."

At times he thinks about home and misses it, but not for too long. "There are advantages to being over there as well. If you're going to be a professional at anything you want to be the best you possibly can and you want to be in an environment which allows you to do that, to push yourself to the limit of your own ability and definitely there's a huge challenge to playing in England."

He is also a bit of a rarity in this Irish team in that along with his brother Paul and Paddy Johns, he has the wining habit at club level. The oft-mooted defensive frailties are simply no longer an issue as far as he's concerned and he remains a high quality, proven finisher.

Certainly, on all available TV evidence you could well see him scoring against the restored Kenny Logan, though the Wasps winger himself has been in prolific form. It's almost the game in microcosm and any one of these little duels might decide it. But he's certainly not fretting about it, and seems somehow immune from the pressure generated by the sheer magnitude of this game.

Generally, the new model Richard Wallace seems an altogether more confident and relaxed figure, without the baggage that had begun to weigh him down toward the end of his first phase in an Irish shirt. Thus, when asked if his professional club career abroad makes it any more difficult to focus on an international, he seems almost stunned.

"Oh no. Maybe that's a personal thing but for me, no, definitely not. I had to refocus myself earlier, that was a need that had to be fulfilled, but this international alone is the highlight of my season to date."