Interview with Rory Delap: David McKechnie talks to the Southampton player about finding his feet as a midfielder and his chance of taking on that position under the new Ireland manager.

Something unusual will happen to John Delap in Carlisle today. Instead of driving the 670-mile round-trip to Southampton that has become a routine feature of supporting his son's career, he has decided to watch Rory face Liverpool at St Mary's Stadium on television.

Lately things have been easier, the discomfort of John's long journey home alleviated by images of another exceptional midfield performance by Rory filling his head. However far the father has driven this season, the son has travelled even further.

Fifth in the Premiership this morning and unbeaten at home, Southampton's surprising vibrancy so far this season has had much to do with the quality of 26-year-old Delap, who has reinvented himself as a dynamic central midfielder after missing out on the Ireland squad for the World Cup.

So compellingly has he discarded his reputation as a utility player that he has made the final three nominations for player of the month in the local newspaper for Southampton's past two glorious months. A club record signing at £4 million when he arrived in the summer of 2001, his displays are finally beginning to sit comfortably alongside the fee.

The journey Delap has taken to reach the fringes of prominence has been full of difficulty and disappointment. It hit a predictable trough last summer when he learned he wouldn't be going to Japan, which reflected his failure to earn more than nine caps - just three of those as a starter - since his debut against the Czech Republic in 1998.

When Mick McCarthy was naming his final squad, Delap had established himself as someone who was nothing in particular: not a full back, a winger or a forward; not an old hand like Lee Carsley or Gary Kelly, not a young gun like Steven Reid. He was neither one from the past nor one for the future, so it was no shock when McCarthy decided he wasn't one for the present either.

Like most of the football world, the Ireland manager was unaware that Delap had already taken decisive steps towards transforming himself into a central midfielder. When he signed at St Mary's, he began as a stop-gap right-back and played poorly, enough to make Gordon Strachan re-evaluate him entirely.

"He got me in after a couple of games, after Ireland's Iran (World Cup play-off) matches," says Delap. "He said he'd take me out of the team for a while, that he saw me as a midfield player and he wanted to see how long it would take me to adjust. It took about five or six weeks to get back in the team and it's taken off since.

"There's still little bits I'm uncomfortable with, nothing major. Sometimes when playing wing-back you'd be out of the game for 10 minutes, but in midfield you seem to be involved all the time. My concentration tends to go if I don't get involved for a while, it's one of my weaknesses. When I started playing in midfield my awareness wasn't right, but I'm getting to know where to go for the ball and when you get it you've got to know what to do with it. That's come on a lot, I'm getting the hang of it."

His timing has improved - and it has had to. His efforts to establish himself with Ireland were thwarted by a habit of picking up injuries and dropping form on the worst possible occasions. After hanging around the periphery of the international squad while playing for Derby County, he got an unexpected chance to show what he could do in the home and away legs of the Euro 2000 play-off against Turkey. Like both team performances in general, it didn't go well.

He received a cortisone injection in an injured foot in an attempt to make the tour to the US the following summer, but it swelled up and he missed out. While McCarthy's new generation was catching his eye, Delap was kicking his heels. He made several squads but didn't play again until the friendly against the US at Lansdowne Road last April. Again, the timing of his omission from the Southampton team last season and a belated run of form did him no favours, and McCarthy had already decided on his squad for Japan.

"I don't think Mick McCarthy knew where to play me," he says. "In most of the games I played I was up front, but every game I started was on the right wing. The young lads came through then and they got above me for the subs places. I was disappointed, but from my point of view I haven't done anything wrong. I've been unlucky with a couple of injuries, but I was probably in 80 per cent of the squads apart from that and didn't get another cap for two years. The team was doing well so you couldn't complain too much.

"I felt it would have been unfair if I had got in to the World Cup squad to be honest, unfair for the other lads who were playing and subs in the qualifiers. I was gutted when he said I wasn't going, but I had prepared myself.

"I seemed to get on well enough with Mick, he had a word with me once to pick it up a bit in training, said I was too laid back and things, but that's the way I've always been. To be fair, Strachan got us in a couple of weeks after he had taken charge here and said the same thing."

The accusation has followed him through his time at Carlisle United and his three-and-a-half years as a goal-scoring wing-back at Derby, but he is finally shaking it. Goals may have eluded him this season, but his galloping energy and competitiveness alongside Matthew Oakley proved too much even for Patrick Vieira and Edu when Arsenal visited St Mary's in November. With Mark Kinsella struggling to impress at Aston Villa, Matt Holland in the First Division with Ipswich and a new Ireland manager about to be appointed, he may have finally learned what timing is about.

"You never know what they're going to do, I mightn't be in the squad," he says. "But I'm sure he'll give everyone a chance, and the timing could be good as far as the way I'm playing is concerned. Whoever gets it will hopefully come and see me while we're still on a run. They always end, you always have dodgy patches.

"There's people talking about Europe, but we've got to be sensible and not get carried away, just keep winning and getting good results. For the last five or six games the gaffer hasn't been able to say that much, just do what we're doing, and a couple of the lads have been outstanding."

Moving to the south coast has distanced Delap from his family and friends, but the consolations are mounting. Expectations with Southampton and Ireland have been matched at home, where his partner, Helen, is due to give birth to their first child at the end of the month. After searching for so long for a position to call his own, the one he finds himself in is bringing nothing but satisfaction.