League: Plenty of miles left in this Gallen

Paul Gallen attacks the England defence at Millennium Stadium. Picture / Getty Images

Paul Gallen is walking across the room at the Australian team hotel in Dublin - and the first thing you think is that the Kangaroos' real life enforcer doesn't look big enough to do what he does.

"I couldn't tell you how many times I've been in a club or pub somewhere and people have said: 'You're not that big, are you'," he laughed.

Gallen gives up the best part of 20kg to many of his rivals - and height-wise, he admits, he's a shrimp standing alongside the game's new-age giants.

"I'd like to say I'm 180cm but I don't know if I'm quite that, around 5' 11," he said.

"When I stand around here and stand next to guys like Greg Inglis and Jimmy Tamou I think, far out, they are massive. I stood next to Jimmy Tamou last week during the anthem and I copped a hammering off all my mates. They were saying, 'why would you stand next to him?'

"But when I'm out on the field I don't feel that. I just feel normal."

And then you see what he does on a football field - how he manages to make more metres than any other forward, week after week, year after year.

This is why Tim Sheens has picked Gallen in the starting front-row for tomorrow night's clash against Ireland.

Sheens watched him come off the bench playing prop last week against Fiji, how he lifted the team as soon as he hit the field, and that could be the key to this whole tournament come finals time.

New Zealand boast probably the biggest pack ever assembled but the Kangaroos have mobility as their strength - through guys like Gallen, who have given up weight and height their whole career but still managed to finish most fights on top.

"I'm about 104kg but you know, I don't feel when I'm getting tackled 'God, that hurt, I'm not going to run again'. I just run the ball as many times as I can," he explained. "I just don't want to let people down, that's the biggest thing."

But the biggest thing in Gallen's life for most of this year was what was going on off the football field.

Without going over the whole Asada investigation here again, Gallen admits it was a hell of a year [at the Sharks] and at times it has almost pushed him past his own breaking point. The Shartks are accused of running a systematic regimen of performance-enhancing peptides in 2011.

"Not just personally but being the captain of the club and seeing what other people have had to go through," he said. "That's what is hard about it. You can deal with your own stuff but seeing your friends go through it and all of us go through it together, it was a pretty tough year.

"I don't know what the outcome of it is going to be. Obviously before round one this year we were told by a group of lawyers that we won't be playing again and here I am 10 months later playing in the World Cup.

"It's been an absolute roller-coaster of a year."