If someone said that Cheltenham North have been boxing clever this season they’d be right.

That’s because once Damien Dinwiddy took over as captain there was a noticeable upturn in the club’s fortunes, and their improved run of results included an eye-catching 41-0 win at previously unbeaten Gloucestershire One leaders Cirencester.

Those in the know will be aware that Dinwiddy is a former boxer, a welterweight who fought in some 60 bouts including a handful of professional ones.

He no longer boxes – he retired seven years ago at the age of 22 – and is now in his second spell with the North after playing for Smiths for several seasons.

This is his second season back and he said of his new role as skipper: “James Hartland is the normal captain but he’s dislocated his shoulder and will be out for a while. They asked me if I’d do it and I said ‘yes’.

“Originally they said it would be a joint thing with other players but I’ve just carried on doing it.”

And it’s a job he’s been doing very well. Dinwiddy missed the first two league games of the season – games that the North lost – with a dislocated shoulder which he sustained playing 7s in the summer.

But since returning to the side he’s certainly made his presence felt both as a captain and as a player.

He plays either as a hooker or as a blindside flanker although he admits he prefers playing in the back row.

“I’m quite small for a hooker – I’m small for both,” he admitted, “but I’m thin for a hooker and that can make it difficult in the scrums. It takes a lot out of my game.”

Dinwiddy believes that his previous life as a boxer has helped him since he took on the captaincy of the club.

“I would say I’m a calm captain,” he said. “I think I’m a calming influence. I think I’m controlled and a good influence on others.”

Dinwiddy grew up just a long clearance kick from the North’s ground in Cleeve but although he played some rugby at Pittville School – “I was a winger in those days,” he said – it was always boxing that gripped him in his younger days.

“I was an amateur boxer at the City of Gloucester,” he said. “I must have won about half my fights and I fought in the ABA’s.

“When I went pro I trained at the Horseshoe Gym in Swindon. I had four pro fights but I lost them all, that’s when I decided I’d had enough.”

But although he had had enough of boxing, he certainly didn’t want to stop playing sport.

“That’s when I started playing club rugby,” he said. “I didn’t want to go from training six hours a day to doing nothing so I turned up at Cheltenham North.”

So how did his rugby develop?

“Not very quickly,” he laughed. “I played for the 2nds for two seasons.”

After moving to Smiths he returned to the North at the start of last season and after the club’s uncertain start to the campaign is delighted with the way things have picked up.

“The training is where it is all coming from,” he said. “The coaches are trying to instil a way of training and a way of playing and it takes time for it to trickle into games.

“But it’s starting to click although there is still a lot to improve.”

So what’s the aim this season?

“Promotion,” said Dinwiddy without a moment’s hesitation. “This is a good club, they do a lot for the players. There are a lot of physios and they get yoga people in. It would be good to go up.”

These days Dinwiddy works as a development engineer at Dowty Propellers which is not far from his home in Brockworth.

That’s a very different career to boxing, of course, and Dinwiddy admits that he wishes he’d started playing club rugby at a younger age.

Neither boxing nor rugby are for the faint-hearted, but which sport does Dinwiddy consider to be the tougher?

“Boxing,” he said, “but it’s a different type of toughness because boxing is individual. If it goes wrong it’s just you. In rugby you’ve got your team-mates to help you.”

And although Dinwiddy was a late starter in club rugby, he is hoping that it may work in his favour over the next few years.

“There’s an old saying in boxing that the later you start, the later you finish,” he said. “I think that applies in rugby too because your body hasn’t taken so many hits.”

Everybody at Cheltenham North will be hoping that is very much the case for Dinwiddy.