It offers impressive testimony to Glenn Hoddle's all-seeing eye that, after four years in the wilderness, Stuart Ripley's name once again sits among the chosen 22 of an England squad. Overlooked footballers throughout England can now rest safe in the knowledge that someone, somewhere is watching them. Certainly, after 18 months of injury, compounded by an uneasy relationship with the team's wingback system, this natural right winger's main concern was getting back into the Rovers side, not England's.

But after managing just five first-team starts last season, he has shown himself within the same number this season to be such a rejuvenated purveyor of crosses and penetration, that a second cap now beckons against Moldova next Wednesday.

The 29-year-old puts his personal renaissance down to his own improved fitness under the new Blackburn manager, Roy Hodgson, and the current regime's ditching of wing-backs in favour of wingers. But most of all, he cites that old cliche - confidence.

Cliches are cliches because they are repeated so often; but they are repeated so often because they tend to contain a truth. Confidence makes a difference, and Ripley can provide the most personal evidence of that.

His first cap came in a World Cup qualifier in November 1993. Not any old qualifier though, for it was that dreaded game against San Marino, Graham Taylor's last in charge. And, coming into the squad, Ripley was shocked by what he found.

"Playing for England is a great honour," he says. "But if you could chose your times, you certainly wouldn't have picked that game. The press were giving the manager a really tough time and I could not believe the negative vibes in the camp.

"Football's all about confidence and the players there were absolutely rock bottom. They were terrified of playing. They knew that if they didn't perform, the criticism was going to be extremely cutting in the papers. It makes for a very difficult environment to come in to."

Four years later, he finds the atmosphere in the England camp "A hundred times better", with players willing to try "the unexpected things you need at international level, the sort of things that are going to change a game. And you are only able to do that if you have confidence."

His confidence has been boosted by Hodgson's insistence on pushing his full-backs 10 yards forward which, in turn, has thrust Ripley and Jason Wilcox on the other wing further up the pitch into "the one-on-one situations that are our strength".

Ripley mantains a religious insistence that he is a winger not a wing-back and, allied to Hoddle's admission that the player's talents as a provider earned him an international recall, points to England dropping the wing-back system for at least part of the Moldova game.

This is okay by Ripley, an intelligent student of life on the wide side who has the confidence it takes to do well. "You've got to go out with a positive manner. As soon as you hesitate and your feet stop moving, you lose the advantage to the defender.

"If you keep on the move and you make the initial move, he can't read your mind, so you've just got that split second.

"You've also got to see what the full-back's doing and then do the opposite, really. If he backs off, you've got to cross it in, if he gets tight, you've got to knock it past him. I feel I can go past anyone at the moment."

During all the dark days Ripley says he never despaired. But if a Moldovan full-back does next Wednesday, he will not mind at all.