Diprose finds depths of team spirit amid Harlequins' adversity

Tony Diprose has always enjoyed a challenge, and tomorrow may well turn out to be as demanding as it gets. "Just think," he sighed, awaiting his lunchtime rations at the Army rugby headquarters in Aldershot, where swanky Harlequins have been taking the Spartan approach to life in an effort to extricate themselves from another fine relegation mess. "Umpteen thousand Irishmen, still hammered after three days on the pop at Cheltenham, hollering themselves silly every time the ball goes in the air. And it's St Patrick's weekend, too."

Had things taken a more favourable turn, the most gifted footballing No 8 in Premiership rugby might have been thinking of another, rather bigger Irish question: the one confronting England in Dublin when the Six Nations' Championship concludes at Lansdowne Road in a little over a fortnight's time. But Diprose has been out of the international loop for almost five years now. Club matters infinitely more than country these days, not least because his livelihood is on the line.

Tomorrow's Guinness-soaked squabble between London Irish and Harlequins at the Madejski Stadium in Reading is a prospect and a half, not least because the home side will smithereen their own attendance records after shifting more than 15,000 tickets in advance. Both sides are deep in the relegation mire, which adds fuel to the flames of history between the two. "I'm not sure there is another love-hate relationship quite like ours anywhere in club rugby," said Mark Evans, the Harlequins coach and chief executive, this week.

Diprose knows what it is to suffer the agonies of relegation, although he was spared the consequences. At the end of the 1995-96 campaign, early in his exceptional professional career with Saracens, he played in a rough, tough, do-or-die, end-of-season match at Gloucester and lost 17-10 – a result that ensured top-flight survival for the West Countrymen and appeared to condemn the Londoners to a spell among the dead-beats.

The fact that Nigel Wray had just bought into Saracens and had signalled the depth of his commitment by signing Michael Lynagh made it all the more calamitous.

"As it turned out, there was a restructuring of the First Division and we stayed up," recalled Diprose. "But I can tell you this much: that afternoon was the lowest point I can remember in the whole of my rugby experience. We'd played pretty well against a typically physical and uncompromising Gloucester side, in front of a typical Gloucester crowd, and we'd come up just short. I was shredded in the dressing room afterwards. Needless to say, I don't want to go through anything like that again."

He might, though. Quins, where Diprose surfaced two seasons ago after joining the exodus from François Pienaar's regime at Sarries, are up to their city-slicker necks in relegation trauma. Having failed to win a Premiership match on the road in 21 attempts, they will find themselves dangerously exposed if they take nothing from their visit to the Madejski.

They have only two home games left, against Leicester and Northampton. The remainder of their fixtures are grim indeed: trips to Headingley, Kingsholm and, at the death, Adams Park, where Wasps would take enormous pleasure in sending them through the trapdoor.

"I'd give my right arm to be in the top six, because you can't help worrying about your future," admitted Diprose. He is 30, and has a year left on his contract, which might be worth rather less to him – nothing at all, quite possibly – if the worst comes to the worst. Yet being the good egg he is – and there are few more likeable characters in the professional game – he is big enough to accept that, with Gloucester almost home and dry at the top, the fun and games at the bottom have rescued the tournament from a tediously processional conclusion.

"This relegation business is not too good for those directly concerned, but it certainly makes things interesting," he acknowledged. "I can see both sides of the argument. Relegation would be devastating for any of the current Premiership clubs, and it is important that we ask ourselves whether we really want any of the teams to go down, given that they are all so competitive and have so much to offer in their distinctive ways. Most of the matches are so difficult to call. Okay, if Gloucester were playing Newcastle at Kingsholm, top versus bottom, you might put your house on a home win. But if Gloucester were up there at Kingston Park? You wouldn't be so sure then, would you?

"There again, the situation at the bottom has guaranteed some really big games right down to the wire. We can all remember the time when the First Division was all about Bath and Leicester, with the rest of us making up the numbers. None of us wanted to admit the gap was as big as it was, but we were kidding ourselves. Now, we are all pretty much capable of beating each other. For all the discomfort of our current situation, I think I prefer it this way."

If Diprose were the sort to fall back on excuses, rather than look within for the reasons behind his club's alarming slide towards relegation and ruin, he would have an entire arms dump of ammunition at his disposal. Quins have been savaged by injuries this term – Keith Wood, Jason Leonard, Roy Winters, Pat Sanderson, Dan Luger, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all – and worse, they have been through emotional turmoil on a scale that would make a soap opera scriptwriter think twice before putting pen to paper. Both Wood and Will Greenwood experienced family tragedy in the weeks preceding the sudden death of Nick Duncombe, that blindingly bright spark of a scrum-half, at 21.

"Yes, it's been hard to take," said Diprose. "People in rugby accept the ups and downs of the game – the injuries, the losses of form, the bad refereeing calls that might cost you a tight game, the spells on the bench or out of the team.

"It's the off-the-field stuff that gets to you, that knocks you sideways, and we've had our share since the start of the season, that's for sure. Has it made us stronger as a group of people? I think it has. The thing now is to make that togetherness count.

"It is always better to take the positives from experience, rather than wheel out the usual excuses, and I detect a change of mood appropriate to our situation. Earlier in the season, we let games slip – away games, too. We should have won at Sale when we had a conversion for the match; we should have won at Saracens, when we were leading in injury time. Big disappointments, both of them, but also proof that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our rugby.

"I take the same view of our last defeat, at Bristol. Twice, we were more than 20 points adrift and we could have thrown in the towel. It was an emotional game, coming after Nick's death, and I'm not sure any of us were completely tuned in. But we didn't let it go, even though we were playing some awful stuff. From somewhere, we found a collective desire to fight back, and although we lost the game, we got within seven points of them and picked up two bonus points that might keep us in the Premiership. Was it for Nick? I don't know for sure, but I suspect there was something of his memory in that upsurge of spirit."

Ah, spirit. Not a word generally associated with Harlequins, unless they happen to be playing in a cup semi-final. There are no cup ties left to them this season, only hard-yard Premiership scraps at the wrong end of the table. If ever they needed to tap into the indefinables, it is now. Starting tomorrow, Tony Diprose and company are about to discover exactly how much they have changed in the face of catastrophe.