Gareth Delve: 'I still have emotional ties to Bath'

As he goes back to the Recreation Ground for the first time, Gareth Delve tells Chris Hewett about his affection for his old club, and how Gloucester have found a new mental toughness

(DAVID ASHDOWN )

Gareth Delve has spent much of his professional career learning how to put things in perspective. If it has been a lengthy process, the Gloucester captain has not exactly been pressed for time: three grisly knee injuries and a dislocated shoulder rendered him incapacitated for such interminable periods, it was reasonable to wonder whether he would ever be compensated for his stolen youth.

Now he finds himself in charge of a team inconsistent enough to drive the most level-headed of leaders to drink, that rational streak is among his greatest assets.

Not that Delve, who celebrates his 27th birthday next week, claims to have reached a full understanding of Gloucester's mood swings: Socrates and Freud combined would struggle to offer a persuasive explanation of why the Cherry and Whites behave as peculiarly as they do. "Last week against Glasgow was an interesting one," the Welshman says, shaking his head. "It was night and day, wasn't it?

"A poor first half, following on from that awful performance in the first match against them, when we really let ourselves down, and then a second half in which we played some of our best rugby to win the match comfortably. I don't think any of us really know why we can go from being completely stale to showing glimpses of what we're really about in the space of 80 minutes."

The cognoscenti at Kingsholm assumed the startling upturn in performance levels against the Scots stemmed from a high-decibel dressing-room rant from the director of rugby, Bryan Redpath. "Not so," insists Delve. "It wasn't a case of smashed teacups or flying hairdriers; just a quiet, sensible analysis of what was going wrong, which we felt was a mix of our own inhibitions resulting from the previous match and the fact that the referee was allowing Glasgow to get away with a hell of a lot at the breakdown. There were one or two tactical adjustments of the kind that have to be made when you're not getting the support you expect from the officials, but the really important message from the coaches was that we should stick to our guns, trust in each other and start expressing ourselves."

No one in European rugby has stuck to his guns more resolutely than Delve, with the possible exception of Jonny Wilkinson, whose catastrophic injury record may yet be recorded for posterity in a souvenir issue of The Lancet. When Gloucester signed the No 8 from Bath he was in the midst of another battle with a recalcitrant cruciate ligament, and he spent his first months at Kingsholm watching his new colleagues go about their business without him. Was he a major-league capture, or a white elephant?

That question has been answered so firmly over the course of this year, it will never be asked again. The moment Delve was drafted into the Gloucester side in January, he was its stand-out performer. He could not single-handedly halt the slide into internal chaos and public humiliation that marked the end of Dean Ryan's long tenure as head coach, but no one papered over more cracks. Indeed, his performance in the unexpected Anglo-Welsh Cup semi-final victory over Ospreys was little short of sensational, holding out hope that he might still fulfil the potential many of England's foremost talent-spotters saw in him during his school years in Bristol. (Brian Ashton, who worked with him at Bath, was foremost among his admirers, to the degree that he thought him capable of "reinventing the way back-row forwards of his type play the game").

"I used to be a roaming player; it was all about getting around the field with the ball in my hands, using my pace and strength to attack defences where they don't like being attacked," he says. "That's changed a little, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Bath wanted me to play a tighter game. John Connolly was in charge then, and Zak Fea'unati was the senior No 8. If I wanted first-team rugby, it was down to me to perform the kind of role Zak was performing.

"Then there were the injuries: two cruciate injuries to my left knee, one to my right. I can't deny that I've lost a yard of pace as a result of all the trouble, but equally, I believe I can get some of that back if I stay fit and well for a decent period of time. It helps that the style we want to develop here at Gloucester suits the kind of things I believe I can offer. Yes, I can play a really tight game if needed, but I'm capable of more than that and as this team grows, I'll have the opportunity to show what I can do."

Delve hails from Cardiff. His family has strong links with the armed services, although the two brothers who saw action in recent years are now safely in Civvy Street. ("Eight years of a Bush presidency did not make life particularly easy for people in their position," he says, pointedly.) His Welshness remains important to him and he is eager to resume an international career that earned him a fistful of caps between 2006 and 2008. However, he is acutely aware of the difficulties of catching the eye of Warren Gatland and his fellow selectors from the "wrong" side of the Severn.

"It would certainly help my cause internationally if I was playing over there with one of the four regional sides," he admits. "Warren has made it very clear that in a 50-50 call between a Wales-based player and an England-based player, he'll go with the guy in Wales. But as things stand, my future is here at Gloucester. The supporters have been incredibly warm in their support of me – they've taken me to their hearts, which is a nice feeling to have – and I feel I owe them. If I want to play Test rugby again, which I do, it's down to me to perform at such a level for Gloucester that I have to be taken into account. It's tough, but it's possible."

If his Welsh links remain strong, so too do the ones he formed with Bath, the club he joined from school. This makes tomorrow's visit to the Recreation Ground, his first on competitive business since leaving for Kingsholm, extremely interesting. "There is an emotional tie to a degree," he confesses, "although I don't expect the locals here to understand that. You know what they think of Bath. Yes, it was a wrench leaving the place – I'd learned so much there and worked with so many good people – but I found myself in one of those situations where a decision had to be made. I suppose I felt that if I didn't take the opportunity offered me by Gloucester, I'd stay at Bath for the rest of my career. The thought of trying something new appealed to me, so I jumped in with both feet. I have no regrets, even though we've been through some difficult times recently."

One of the most difficult was a 50-point beating by Cardiff Blues in the Anglo-Welsh final at Twickenham last April. "That was the culmination of a lot of problems we'd been facing, but hadn't dealt with," he says. "If you ask me where those problems began, I'd point to the Premiership semi-final against Leicester the previous season – a game we should have won decisively, but didn't. I don't believe we'd properly recovered from that disappointment when we played the Blues, even though the best part of a year had gone by. It was such a smack in the teeth for everyone involved, especially as the team had been top of the Premiership for 21 rounds out of 22.

"Do I think it's all behind us now? We've certainly moved a long way down the road. We're very clear how we want to play and we feel more in control of our own destiny. If there's been a lack of mental toughness here at times, we're working hard to address it. That was why it was so important to turn things around against Glasgow. Had they beaten us a second time, it would have seemed more than a blip. By winning in the way we did, we can travel to Bath in a good frame of mind."