Dallaglio relishes his chance in the ring to fight for back-row role

Clive Woodward is forever banging on about the cut-throat environment in which his England players operate, and the back-rowers – four undisputed world-class talents, two more with similar potential and a posse of new-generation wannabes who fancy themselves rotten – are the most insanely competitive group of the lot, as Lawrence Dallaglio readily confirms. "Does it all kick off between us in training? Oh yes, but only for 10 minutes or so because people start getting hurt," he says, his jaw set firm and his eyes ablaze. "Still, it's fun while it lasts."

It has come to this, then: Dallaglio, once the brightest star in the red rose firmament and seemingly Woodward's captain in perpetuity – a good-time Londoner at heart but a very superior, almost patrician figure when wearing the white shirt that gives meaning to his professional life – has been reduced to fighting, sometimes quite literally, for his Test place, not only with Richard Hill and Neil Back, with whom he played umpteen internationals between 1997 and 2001, but with Lewis Moody and Joe Worsley and Alex Sanderson and Andy Hazell and God knows how many others. And, as often as not these days, losing the fight.

Last November, Dallaglio played No 8 in a tight victory over the All Blacks and was dropped for his trouble. He was on the bench the following week when the Wallabies came to town, and found himself similarly cold-shouldered for the red-raw game with the Springboks, although he played 60-odd minutes of that one because of an injury to Moody, the young pretender who stopped pretending and started doing it for real in Argentina last summer. Had Dallaglio travelled to Buenos Aires, he would have captained his country for the first time since his excruciating entanglement with the tabloids in the spring of 1999 and might not have found himself in this situation. But he remained in London, nursing some dodgy tendons in his hand. Seldom did a little sinewy tissue cause so eminent a performer so much unmitigated grief.

Still, he will be back in familiar surroundings against Wales this afternoon – the stricken Moody is away with the physios once again – and alongside Hill and Back, too. They were together at Twickenham in 1998 when, from the base of the scrum, Dallaglio put a try past the Red Dragonhood that remains one of the more astounding feats in a run of fixtures stretching back to the age of Gladstone. They were also together at Wembley a year later, when England threw away a Grand Slam with the carelessness of a millionaire lobbing some loose change in the general direction of a Big Issue salesman. The Welsh have had little to laugh about since, but the memory still warms the cockles west of the Severn.

Dallaglio's captaincy came under intense scrutiny in the aftermath of that trauma, and he continues to bristle at the mere mention of it. "It is not a game on which I tend to reflect," he said, "and I certainly don't need to look back on it as a means of motivation for this weekend. I have quite enough motivation to play well, thanks very much." That motivation being born of dented pride, a damaged ego and an unwelcome acceptance that no one player, no matter how influential, is indispensable – not Martin Johnson, not Jonny Wilkinson and certainly not the "Italian Stallion".

"We all have our setbacks – Martin has been on the bench at times, Jeremy Guscott found himself there for a while – and they hurt. If any player relished being among the replacements rather than in the starting line-up, there would be something seriously wrong with the bloke. But what do you do? You can disagree and argue with selection decisions all you like, but in the end, it's down to others and you have to swallow it.

"I've been as positive and supportive as I know how, while biding my time and hoping for an opportunity. That opportunity has now arrived and I intend to prove a thing or two to certain people."

Andy Robinson, Woodward's second in command, is very definitely one of those on the celebrated No 8's list. While Woodward has never been anything other than a staunch supporter of his original choice as captain – "Leaving Lawrence out was a big call and it hurt him tremendously, so I'm delighted to say he has handled everything fantastically well and shown unflinching support for those selected ahead of him," he asserted this week – Robinson retains an earthy West Countryman's wariness of Dallaglio's flashy line in London swagger. England insiders say the coach threw down the gauntlet at an early-season England get-together by questioning Dallaglio's desire – not in private, but in front of the red rose multitude. Robinson neither confirms nor denies the story.

"Of course I believe I'm worthy of a starting place," Dallaglio said in response to a question he clearly believed to border on the obtuse. "To come off the pitch having beaten the All Blacks and then find myself dropped... well, that was a bit of a shock, to be honest. For one reason or another, I'd never spent much time on the bench. It was new to me, and I didn't like it. I still don't like it, although it poses a challenge of its own. You can't approach it in a negative way, because the moment you get on the pitch you have to play as though you'd been out there from the kick-off. It's pretty weird, actually, trying to trick yourself into believing you're completely involved when you're not."

By his own admission, Dallaglio circa 2003 is a very different rugby animal to Dallaglio circa 1995, when he made his England debut off the bench against South Africa; or, indeed, to Dallaglio circa 1999, when he recovered from trial by Fleet Street to stack up commendably well during that autumn's World Cup. Most red rose-watchers believe this change is wholly to do with the knee-reconstruction surgery he underwent after invaliding himself out of the 2001 Lions tour of Australia; in short, it is assumed that he is neither as quick nor flexible as he once was, and has compensated by rethinking his modus operandi.

That is not quite how Dallaglio sees it. "I think it's more a question of a natural progression," said the man memorably described by an admiring Guscott as possessing the lungs of an elephant. "I don't play as wide as I once did, certainly, but my close-quarter work has benefited as a result. I get my hands on the ball a lot more and my work-rate is higher than it's ever been. Whether that gets noticed by everyone, I don't know, but I'm enjoying life at the coal-face. It suits the sort of player I've become.

"I can't deny that the knee injury had an effect, though. It hit me for six, the whole thing: I poured a hell of a lot of hope and optimism into trying to make it through the Lions tour, and when it went wrong I felt very down about life. It took me a long time to recover my confidence."

Now that both spirit and flesh are willing, the Welsh may well find themselves on the wrong side of a force of rugby nature this afternoon. If Dallaglio gets this one right, he has much to look forward to: an early-summer tilt at the All Blacks in Wellington, where England have never won, and a shot at the Wallabies in Australia, where England have never won. He is a certainty for the World Cup, assuming he stays fit, and then, at the end of next season, he will decide where to spend the remainder of his career. Biarritz are said to be interested in his services, and they will not be alone in making him a handsome offer.

"My contract with Wasps expires at the end of the 2003-04 campaign, by which time I'll have been there 14 years, man and boy," he said. "Biarritz? I don't know anything about that. But there aren't too many beaches in Acton or High Wycombe, where I spend most of my working life, so we'll have a little think about things at some point down the road." There is no better place to have a "little think" than on the replacements' bench. But Dallaglio is off the bench now, and is not planning to return there any time soon.