ALLAN DELL eventually got to bed at 5am on the Sunday morning after Scotland’s Six Nations victory over Italy at the weekend, but anyone hoping for a juicy story involving the sort of hell-raising that rugby players were notorious for back in the amateur days will be disappointed to hear that the prop actually made it home by midnight and spent the next five hours quietly watching boxing on television.
"I stuck around [after the game], we had a few drinks here [at Murrayfield] at the post-match function, then went out to a restaurant for a team meal – it was the last time to be together on this journey with Vern and it was nice to be together – we had a good evening but before it got a bit messy, I ducked out," he explains.
It is just as well because there has been no time set aside for the 25-year-old to recover from any sort of hangover – whether it is self-induced or because of the physical and psychological strain of battling through his first Six Nations campaign.
He was back at Murrayfield on Monday morning to start preparation for Edinburgh’s Guinness Pro12 clash away to the Scarlets on Friday. It has been a tough season for the capital outfit – they sit ninth in the table and are 15 points behind eighth-placed Cardiff Blues – but Dell insists that motivating himself for one last push to the end of the campaign has not been difficult.
The fact that Edinburgh are still in with a chance of silverware in the European Challenge Cup is a bonus; but the main factor driving the South African (who qualifies for Scotland through his Paisley-born grandmother) is professional pride and distaste at being part of an under-performing side.
“Getting out of bed and wanting to compete as an athlete is not difficult. You want Edinburgh to do well. We've got five league games left, obviously we can't make the play-offs but there is a lot of pride to play for. Then there is the excitement of La Rochelle in the Challenge Cup. There are still big things to play for and achieve as a team," he says.
"Results haven't gone our way, through luck and our own inconsistency and poor performances. We don't want to finish down the bottom, we want to go on a good run and finish the season in a good way. Pride is the biggest thing."
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