'We didn't expect this': Former Brumbies flyer turned Connacht star Mack Hansen's Ireland Test call-up has family stunned

So it might be the luck of the Irish that he had a silky sidestep and a booming boot which is about to turn the kid from Canberra into a Test rugby player.

Or maybe it's in the blood; his grandfather Kevin Hansen played rugby league for Australia, and on the other side, his grandfather John O'Shea was a hurling championship winner in Ireland.

Now Hansen has been named on the wing for Ireland's Six Nations clash with Wales at a heaving stadium on Dublin's famed Lansdowne Road on Sunday morning [AEDT].

He looms as one who got away from Australian rugby. A winger stuck behind an all-star cast at the ACT Brumbies, the Daramalan College product slipped through the cracks of Super Rugby before Connacht coach Andy Friend picked up the phone.

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So off Hansen went, with 14 Brumbies caps to his name, to his mother Diana's homeland to join Connacht. Now, maybe a good thing those plans to be a sparky didn't quite work out for the former Junior Wallabies back.

"I was terrible. I wasn't a good sparky at all, I don't think that was going to be my thing long-term," Hansen said.

"I would have loved to have been, I just was no good at it. I don't know what I would have done if not for footy. I'm just lucky I haven't had to put too much thought into it."

Hansen has scored tries for fun with Connacht, but few beyond Ireland coach Andy Farrell would have expected a Test call-up would come so soon.

Farrell knows it can be tough for any player the moment they first set foot into an international camp. The good ones thrive early, and "Mack certainly did that".

Whether he would have played for the Wallabies one day, we will never know. But ask his father Craig Hansen and you soon realise a green jersey means more to the dazzling winger than you might realise.

"Honest to god, you can go into our garage and we've got a clothes rack there," Craig said.

"The boys have always followed Ireland because of Diana. There's jumpers in there, there's puffer jackets that they've bought themselves. They've always followed Ireland, but to sit there and go 'I'm going to play for Ireland?'

"Put it this way, you can go over there and say 'I've got the chance to play for Ireland, I'm Irish qualified', but you don't know it's going to happen, and not this quick anyway.

"I was only just saying to Diana today, if it was the Wallabies or Ireland, I don't care. He just wants to play footy, whether it be for Gungahlin or the Brumbies, all he wants to do is play footy. Diana's family has just been bombarding us. He's got a lot of family over there.

"I've got something on my phone and it just dings, and I don't know how to turn it off. At 4am I heard this 'ding, ding, ding'. I'm going 'okay, it's happening'.

"We didn't expect this, seriously. He'd spent a lot of his life in Canberra and he loved the Brumbies. You know what they say about rugby, play rugby and see the world. He had an opportunity over there, and he just wanted to go over and play footy. That's the only reason.

"Playing for Ireland, that's pie in the sky stuff, or playing for the Wallabies, that's the kind of stuff you dream of. For it to come true, fair dinkum, it's unbelievable."

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