Delaney fitting in at Palace

CHAMPIONSHIP PLAY-OFF:

It’s Crystal Palace’s media day ahead of Monday’s play-off with Watford and the Corkman is talking about... well, not quite the elephant in the room; rather the element in the room that caused such a literal stink at Brighton ahead of their semi-final second leg: the excrement on the floor.

“Listen, if you look at most of the lads around this team, they’ve been around the lower leagues long enough and you want to see some of the changing rooms there that we’ve been in. You’ve not lived until you’ve been at Lincoln away or someone like that. They are bad changing rooms, or the old Colchester ground.

“But, man, that wasn’t going to distract us.”

Quite the opposite. A fired-up Palace won 2-0 with the Old Trafford-bound Wilf Zaha putting in a wondrous performance. At the other end, Delaney stayed solid. The 31-year-old had worked too long and hard to get that far.

Delaney was actually ready to give up on the English game last summer. After playing in every division except the Premier League for Hull City, and then suffering a compression injury at Ipswich that almost cost him his left leg — let alone his career — he was prepared to go to America, maybe keep up his growing interest in triathlons.

Now, over a decade after a handful of Premier League appearances with Leicester City, he finds himself on the verge of returning to the elite with Palace.

“I didn’t think I would be in this situation. It was a difficult time at Ipswich, three years there playing in relegation battles and what-not. I got released at the end of the year and was in limbo.

“Disillusioned might be a bit too strong a word, but I was thinking that the Championship is a tough slog. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

“I spoke to my dad after I was released at Portman Road and said, ‘for the first time in 12 years I’m unemployed’. It’s a scary thought when you’ve been a pro for 12 years. I genuinely didn’t have a club.”

Within an hour of that conversation, though, he would. As luck would have it, that was when the call came through from former Palace manager Dougie Freedman. Dubliner Paddy McCarthy had just suffered a groin injury that would put him out for the entirety of the 2012-13 season, so Palace were in dire need of a central defender.

Delaney slotted in easily and immediately showed the kind of form that has seen him win five caps for Ireland and stay in or around Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad. He even survived Freedman’s move to Bolton Wanderers, keeping his place as one of the key players in the team under Ian Holloway.

“I’ll forever be indebted to the pair of them for what they did for me,” Delaney says.

“That is the good thing about this changing room, everyone made me feel welcome and I got a good vibe.

“The lads here have reaffirmed my love for the game.”

You can certainly tell that from the way Delaney is now smiling and joking, laughing about how he knows more about Blackpool than he ever thought he would because of Holloway’s endless talk about his time in the Premier League with them.

Delaney is also able to crack a line about the chaotic final day of the Championship, which saw Palace having to twice come from behind against Peterborough to secure their play-off place, eventually scoring a late winner.

“When they scored, you start thinking, ‘shit, here we go’, and at half time we’re asking for the other results. Even then when they score a second, I’m thinking, Expedia when I get home! There’s every chance I could be on holiday tomorrow’!”

Instead, he’s playing at Wembley on Monday, fully confident Palace’s spirit is enough to both beat Watford and make them competitive in the Premier League. There, and at Wembley itself, the dressing rooms tend to be cleaner. More importantly, Delaney’s own career is a lot clearer. He’s only looking up.