Rugby Union: Special reserve Ojomoh seeking vintage form: Bath's fall guy is dropped for Barbarians encounter but intends to tackle selection mishaps this season. Steve Bale reports

ANYWHERE else except Bath and England and his selection would be automatic, but it has been the baleful lot of Steve

Ojomoh to earn lavish praise for virtually every performance for club and country, only to find himself discarded when an awkward selectorial choice had to be made. Today, typically, he finds himself playing second-team rugby rather than for Bath against the Barbarians.

Even so, it is a reasonable hope for the new season that henceforth, in the perming of three back-row forwards from four worthy candidates, someone else will be the unlucky one.

Assuming, that is, he does not lose the keen edge which past uncertainty has given him. Would he be as good a player, he can't help wondering, if he knew his place were secure? 'When I play it's as if I have a grudge, probably because of the disappointments there have been,' he said.

'This is completely different from my character as a person, and I wonder if the way I take things in my stride off the field makes it easier for selectors to drop me.

'It's an oddly thrilling feeling to know that if you don't perform you are a failure, to be constantly playing rugby on a tightrope. The way I see it is that I'm going to go out and play so well they'll have to find a place for me. Let other people do the debating. Let other people not sleep at night.'

This would seem a sensibly stoical philosophy were it not for the crushing nature of the disappointments to which Ojomoh refers. Last season Bath had four international back-row forwards and when it came to the crunch - most obviously the Pilkington Cup final against Leicester - it was John Hall, Ben Clarke and Andy Robinson who were preferred.

Ojomoh did play the last 30 minutes as a replacement for the injured Robinson, which took his grand total of first-team appearances to nine for the season. This season the same quartet, with Hall again the Bath captain, are competing for the same three places.

The England situation was uncomfortably similar and again it was Ojomoh who missed out. Called up for his debut at No 8 when Ben Clarke withdrew from the Ireland game, he was the only player to emerge with reputation enhanced from that defeat. His subsequent display in England's win in France was such that he was singled out for acclamation by the then-coach Dick Best.

Much good it did him. As soon as Dean Richards had recovered from a dislocated elbow he was restored alongside Clarke and Tim Rodber and Ojomoh was yet again the odd man left out against Wales. 'It's the part of the job I hate, but Ojomoh has done everything asked of him and will have many more caps for England,' Geoff Cooke, in his final selection statement as England manager, said consolingly.

If Cooke is proved right, it will be as much despite as because of the selectors. Even under the new management regime of Jack Rowell, all-too-familiar to Ojomoh as coach of Bath, he made the Test team on tour in South Africa only through injury to Richards.

This frustrates Ojomoh himself rather less than those who argue his case. 'After being on so many tours, I know exactly what they're like and what to expect,' he said. 'I always seem to start off in the midweek side but finish up in the Test side. To do that, from the very first game you have to play as if it's your last game ever.'

Ojomoh's value to England in South Africa was such that he appeared in seven of their eight tour fixtures, and only in the second Test, when the entire England pack was out of sorts, did he fail to impress. As well as this consistency and versatility, his awesome power on the ball and in the tackle exemplifies the loose forward of the 1990s.

That he has been in the England team at all, or Bath's for that matter, can be put down as much to the Governor of Hong Kong as to his special ability or occasional selectorial favour. Ojomoh is a

Nigerian who came from Benin City to West Buckland School, Devon, at the age of 11.

England Schools caps followed, but when he left school in July 1989 he was told he was ineligible to renew his visa and would have been expelled but for the intervention of the then-MP for Bath, one Chris Patten. Strings having been pulled at the Home Office, Ojomoh was granted an indefinite visa, recently completed a three- year course in business and finance administration at the University of the West of England, and this week, aged 24, embarked on a career as sports and promotions officer for a publishing company.

Now all he needs is for Bath and England to pick him. 'At Bath no one can come back from England and assume anything,' he said. 'Paul Simpson set a precedent when he played against Ireland in 1987. One week he was playing at Lansdowne Road for England and the next at Lansdown Hill for the Bath second team.

'But I did tell Bath towards the end of last season when I had played for England that they weren't helping my chances. I felt I had to tell them I couldn't go on like that indefinitely and that the fair thing to do was have a rota.

'Since then Brian Ashton, our new coach, has reassured me about fairness in selection. If things remained the same, I suppose I would have to take my services elsewhere, but to me that would be a failure. To be honest the battle to win my place at Bath is why I never moved in the first place.'

A decent season for the champions - preferably with more than nine first-team games - is all Ojomoh now requires to ensure his place in England's squad for next year's World Cup in South Africa. And though, as he knows all too well, squad is not the same as team, everything indicates that by then 'Ojo' will be the one England cannot, rather than always, leave out.

(Photograph omitted)