Ever heard the one about the Yorkshireman, Irishman and adopted Welshman?

No it’s not the opening line of a joke but the man being touted as the potential next Wales head coach.

Timing, as with any good gag, is everything and by a twist of fate Simon Easterby leads the first opposition to Cardiff since Warren Gatland’s exit.

Yet the interim Ireland coach could be the closest thing Welsh rugby has had to one of its own leading the national team in 18 years.

He went to the same school as Lawrence Dallaglio and was, at one time, Ireland’s most capped flanker but his rugby was forged in west Wales. Other than the colour of his passport, Easterby is pure Scarlet.

The ex-forward played more than 200 times for the club over the course of 11 years, alongside his brother for many of those and including five seasons as captain.

Three times a Welsh Cup winner and a Celtic League champion, he also came within a crossbar’s width of a European Heineken Cup final – all with the same club.

Easterby was the last man to lead out Llanelli at their ancestral home of Stradey Park and was even a pallbearer at the funeral of the great Ray Gravell.

He spent the next four years at Scarlets as a coach, two as head coach, before the lure of international rugby with Ireland came knocking.

But could the pull now come from the opposite direction?

Former Llanelli team-mate Dwayne Peel, now Scarlets head coach, enthused at the prospect.

“Simon is a great guy and an excellent coach. He’s a real professional and would be a great appointment if Wales were lucky enough to get him,” said Peel.

“But is he available? He’s coaching one of the best teams in the world and I know what coaching Ireland means to him. So there’s a lot to cross.

“It’s a bit disrespectful to talk right now about him leading Wales, but from my perspective he’d be excellent.”

Easterby, 49, is seen as perfect material to succeed Gatland, the man who handed him his international debut back in 2000.

Young, detailed, diligent and ambitious – he even lives closer to the Wales team’s headquarters in the Vale of Glamorgan than most of the squad.

He has been an assistant coach for the past 11 years and knows he will slip back into that role when Andy Farrell returns from his secondment with the British & Irish Lions.

Easterby may be hedging his bets should Farrell move on to, say England, but knows top Test jobs do not come around often.

He said earlier this week there has been no contact from the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) but that is unsurprising in the middle of a Six Nations.

The WRU wants to appoint ahead of the summer tour so have time to wait and Easterby did not emphatically rule himself out of the running when asked.

“Right now, this [Ireland] is my only focus and whatever happens in the future… in a year’s time you could lose your job and we know in sport it’s fairly fluid around people moving from thing to thing,” he said.

Former Wales wing Mark Jones played alongside Easterby at Llanelli where they also began their coaching careers together.

“He was a good laugh off the pitch and always great company on the way to training or to games,” said Jones, now head coach at Ospreys.

“But once he crossed that whitewash, he knew when it was time to switch on. He was very good at setting standards.

“Whenever he returned to Llanelli from being away with Ireland he was always ready to play the next week for the club. He never had to be asked, and that’s actually quite rare. It marked him out as a real pro with a great work ethic.”

The question remains whether Easterby would want the Wales job. Michael Cheika is understood to be keen and Franco Smith was eager to have his name included among the candidates while the WRU still believes the job is an enticing one.

“There’s a lot to be positive about in Welsh rugby over the coming years and any coach might want to be part of that,” said Jones.

“Simon is ambitious and I’m sure a top job would interest him, but I also think he’s very happy in that Ireland environment at the moment.”

On Saturday, Easterby will be intent on inflicting more misery on Welsh rugby. There are those who believe he could soon be part of the solution.

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