Sooner rather than later someone will ask Dave Ward how it feels to be an overnight success. England's potential next Test hooker will smile and politely tell them about the seven-year gap between his first and second Premiership starts, the sales job he rejected in order to prolong his rugby dream and the humiliation which transformed his career. He has waited a lifetime for the rare opportunity now accelerating towards him.
His participation in this weekend's play-off eliminator against Bath, his home-town club whose colours he first wore as a six-year-old, is a heartwarming tale on its own. It could swiftly be overtaken, though, by a storyline straight out of Hollywood. Such is the sudden dearth of fit English hookers that Ward, who was playing for the Cornish Pirates only two years ago, could win a first cap against New Zealand next month. If the Championship needs a fresh ambassador for the untapped talent lurking outside the game's elite, it has found him.
Ward, 29 later this month, is everything top players sometimes forget to be: great fun, an old-school character and a real trier. In his spare time he coaches Guildford and fancies himself as a Lovejoy figure, prone to searching for antique bargains in West Country skips. "It's good fun and it keeps you pretty grounded. One day I'm training with Nick Evans, Chris Robshaw and Nick Easter; the next I'm down Bristol with my brother looking through a skip trying to find something. I like original stuff. It doesn't have to be expensive. Mass-produced stuff from Ikea is brilliant for what it is but I'd rather have something I found in a skip and did up myself. It gives it a bit of ownership."
He already knows what a professional scrapheap feels like, having been denied a regular Premiership role until now. Had Quins' regular hookers Rob Buchanan and Joe Gray not been injured this season, he might still be third choice at the Stoop. It shows in the way he plays: all-action and unfeasibly enthusiastic. Quins' director of rugby, Conor O'Shea, was watching kids' cartoons with his family recently when Mrs O'Shea announced that Scrappy Doo, Scooby's nephew, was Ward's double.
Scrappy's catchphrase – "Let me at 'em!" – neatly sums up a player who has wrestled the odds since his mini days at Bath. He played in Duncan Bell's hand-me-down jerseys – "I always had to grow into them" – because their respective fathers worked together, and was once Mark Regan's ballboy. "I remember my first day at Bath, walking into the changing-room, and Matt Perry saying: 'What's the ballboy doing training with us?'" Having switched from flanker to hooker at 18, he briefly graduated to the first team alongside Bell but, with Lee Mears, Pieter Dixon and Rob Hawkins ahead of him, the romance faded. "I didn't really knuckle down as hard as I should have done. I believed my own press a bit. That's what I'm trying to get through to youngsters nowadays. It's not enough to get to where you are. You've got to keep working hard."
His own moment of epiphany occurred on a windswept back pitch in Northampton, where his hopes of ousting Dylan Hartley swiftly nosedived.
"I was basically getting eased out by the forwards coach at the time. He made me go and play a game of fetch on the third-team pitch. An intern would throw a ball and I had to dive on it and bring it back as quickly as I could." Ward suddenly knew he had two choices: give it his all or walk away for good. "I told myself I was going to do it as hard and fast as I could. From that moment I decided that was how I was always going to roll in rugby."
Ever since, he has tried to be the first on to the training pitch and the last off it. "You can't be last off it here because Chris Robshaw always is but, apart from that, that's what I've tried to do. Conor always says, and I agree with him, that nothing in life that comes easy is worth having." Ward's father can testify to that.
"My father played football for Derby Boys and got offered a contract to play for Leicester at the time of Gary Lineker but he turned it down to do a degree in medicine. He failed that so it wasn't the best decision in his life. He has been through some thin times but, hopefully, he is reaping the rewards now."
It just underlines the degree to which youthful decisions can shape lives. Ward junior freely admits he owes a lot to the Pirates, for whom he played 110 games in three years following a brief stint at Sale. Despite the modest money he was offered, a move to distant Penzance appealed more than the alternative: a part-time contract at Pertemps Bees with a sales job attached. "I still wanted to be a professional rugby player. You earn your money at Pirates but going down there was the best decision I've ever made."
Now they love him at Quins. As well as frequent man of the match awards he has just picked up the club's most prestigious end-of-season accolades, for player of the year and players' player. Turnovers are a speciality, the impromptu short lineout that undid Exeter last Sunday his latest contribution. "Wardy has been incredible, he really has," says O'Shea. "This is his Indian summer … he's a real competitor and I like that. He'd be an unbelievable tourist in New Zealand." It would raise a particular cheer in the clubhouse at Guildford, where he has just helped coach the first team to a promotion and cup double.
There would also be no prouder squad member. "If I did go [to New Zealand] it would be a dream. It's the aim of a lifetime to go on tour with England. Even for me to get a Saxons cap – I'd have loved to know the odds on that at the start of the season." He also reckons Quins may yet confound many if they reach the play-offs. "I'm not looking beyond this weekend but if we win there's nothing stopping us going to the final." From the skip to the trophy engravers? Rugby's answer to Scrappy Doo deserves all the juicy bones he is suddenly enjoying.
