EXPERIENCED centre Alex Grove says he isn’t fazed by the strong competition in Worcester Warriors’ squad.

Grove has played only two full matches so far in Warriors’ Greene King IPA Championship campaign.

The 27-year-old was named in Warriors’ starting line-up for last night’s trip to Munster ‘A’ and scored a try in Worcester’s 31-12 victory against Moseley last Saturday.

He said: “At any decent club, it’s only right that if you don’t play well, then you are not picked and that’s how it should be.

“I want to be involved in a decent club and we have now got a base of players that are so competitive and able to play that we are heading in the right direction.

“We have a group of players and whoever takes the field they want to win and put in a good performance and put their case forward.

“A good environment is one which is competitive and one in which everyone wants to play.

“At the moment, we probably have three people in every position in the 15 who can pull on the shirt and do a good job.

“At 12 we have got Ravai Fatiaki, Ryan Mills and Andy Symons and, at 13, Max Stelling has been going very well. “Some of these younger guys who didn’t get much involvement last year are really shining this year and it’s good to see.”

Grove has been one of the most consistent performers at Sixways over the last few seasons.

A product of the Warriors academy, the former Rugby School pupil represented Scotland at under 18, 19 and 20 level before his big breakthrough on to the international stage.

He appeared 22 times during director of rugby Dean Ryan’s first season in charge and was rewarded with a new contract last December.

Grove gained his first call-up to the full Scotland squad for the November internationals in 2009, starting games against Fiji and Australia and coming off the bench against Argentina.

Grove’s impressive rise to rugby fame continued in May 2010 when he was named in the Scotland squad to tour Argentina during the summer.

His qualification for Scotland is through his grandfather Ron Wylie, the former Aston Villa and Birmingham City footballer, who managed West Bromwich Albion.

Grove said: “I have seen quite a lot of change around Warriors both in players and coaching staff and it’s now the best environment we’ve had in the nine seasons I have been with the club.

“It’s now not just the same 15 who are playing week-in week-out and that’s probably what this place has been guilty of in the past – playing the same team over and over again.

“Winning is great, you get a buzz on a Monday morning and people are here for the right reasons.”

Grove first experienced the second tier of English rugby when he was loaned to Birmingham and Solihull in his second season at Sixways.

“Worcester were in the Championship a few years later and I had half- a- season with the club. It seems strange that the teams who were strong the last time were in the Championship, the likes of Bedford and Cornish Pirates, are struggling a bit,” he said.

“It’s interesting to see some of the teams on the way up and some who have fallen down. We are fortunate we have got very generous people behind the scenes who continue to put money into the club.

“Bristol have had a huge influx of top players and London Scottish are slowly building.”

Grove played in Warriors’ defeat at rivals Bristol and believes the end-of-season promotion battle will be fierce, “I would not say we look at Bristol’s results but we know that, come the end of the season, they will be in the top four and we will be in the top four,” said Grove.

“We are not going to pretend we’re not going to get in the top four. We will be there and, at some point, we will have to play Bristol, whether it’s in the play-off semi-final or the final.”