When an independent medical advisor was required to assess Wayne Rooney's scan, one man immediately sprang to the mind of England's team doctor Leif Sward. Professor Angus Wallace, arguably Britain's most respected orthopaedic surgeon, was a fellow student of the Swede at medical school in the early 70s.

Sward identified the tough-talking Scot as the ideal person to judge Rooney's chances of featuring in the World Cup, aware that Wallace is no stranger to making critical decisions. On a British Airways plane travelling from Hong Kong to London 11 years ago, he saved a woman's life with a coathanger, a bottle of brandy and other improvised implements.

Paula Dixon had boarded flight BA032 despite suffering injuries after crashing her motorbike en route to the airport. As the plane left the runway Wallace and another doctor were summoned to Dixon's aid after she complained of chest pain, which was diagnosed as potentially fatal tension pneumothorax.

A broken rib had punctured the membrane surrounding the lungs that keeps the chest cavity airtight. Wallace decided to operate despite being without his basic medical equipment. He used part of the coathanger, sterilised in brandy, to insert tubing into her chest to release air. Dixon completed a full recovery within minutes of the makeshift operation at 35,000ft.

"I told her I was terribly sorry but I was going to have to operate," he said. "We sterilised it all with Courvoisier and when the operation was over, I drank the rest. I can tell you, I needed it."

The incident propelled Wallace into the nation's conscience but he was already cultivating a reputation as one of Britain's leading figures in orthopaedic surgery. Currently working as a consultant at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre, he is one of the few experts involved in both diagnosis and treatment. Wallace is a former chairman of the now-defunct National Sports Medicine Institute and has also written dozens of medical papers.

"He's very respected by his peers and one of the first people you would turn to for an opinion," said Fares Haddad, an orthopaedic surgeon at London's Wellington hospital. "There's only a few people that are turned to for such advice and he is one of them. He's a big character."

Raised in the outskirts of Dundee, Wallace's strong personality mirrors that of Sir Alex Ferguson, who opposed Rooney's return to the England squad. Wallace's expertise made him an obvious choice to assess the England striker, but his no-nonsense approach was also crucial.

He must, however, have been stunned by Rooney's recovery. Last month Wallace commented: "I fear for him. He is going to have a hard job playing [in Germany]. From a medical point of view, we would obviously advise that he is given adequate time for the fracture to heal properly."

Following his mid-air heroics, Wallace was one of the first recipients of the Weigelt-Wallace Award that acknowledges exceptional examples of patient care. Margaret Thatcher praised his "courage, capacity for split-second decision-making and his can-do approach". Wallace donated his £33,000 prize towards medical research at Nottingham University.

Away from saving lives, his hobbies include woodwork and navigating his 56ft narrowboat. The tranquil canals are a stark contrast from the storm he was caught in this week.