Reddan has that winning mentality

The ex-Wasps scrumhalf still likes to crow about his victory over Leicester, writes GERRY THORNLEY

TO HAVE played or not to have played? Only come 7pm or thereabouts at Twickenham on Saturday will we know whether Leinster’s double-seeking troops are more match-hardened or whether, resting up if not exactly idle in the Portuguese sunshine, Ulster will be the refreshed, more revitalised force.

History has taught us that it works both ways. In the seasons 2002-03, ’03-04 and ’04-05, when the English Premiership had the second-placed team host the third-placed in one semi-final for the right to play the first-placed club in the final, Wasps made a virtue of finishing second before going on to win three home semi-finals.

Then, more battle-hardened, Warren Gatland’s team beat Gloucester (39-3), Bath (10-6) and Leicester (39-14) in successive finals at Twickenham against opponents who had been idle for two or three weeks. A week after the latter, they would return to Twickenham to complete the last double of Heineken Cup and domestic league by beating Toulouse (and there is no such thing as an idle week in France) in the final.

However, two years later, by which stage Wasps had lost some of their lustre, the shoe was on the other foot. Leicester beat Wasps 40-26 in the last round of regular-season fixtures, before beating Bristol and thrashing Gloucester 44-16 in the Premiership final. Having also won the Anglo-Welsh Cup earlier in the campaign, they returned to Twickenham a week later to encounter a Wasps side that hadn’t played since their beating in Welford Road three weeks’ beforehand.

Much is often made of the leadership and Leicester mentality which Leo Cullen (a second-half replacement that day) and Shane Jennings, who started, brought with them on their prodigal return to Leinster. But the Irishman who still crows about that day is the ex-Wasps scrumhalf Eoin Reddan.

“We hadn’t played for, it might have been, three weeks or something, and they had played two finals in a row and won them and were going for the treble. To be honest, most of the Wasps lads don’t like the Leicester lads very much. A lot of them had won a Heineken Cup before so stopping Leicester was definitely as much a motivation as winning the thing. It was unbelievable. We had two tries from first phase that day and that’s what broke the game.”

“Yeah, and who scored the tries,” recalls Jennings, raising his eyes to the roof. Indeed, in what was quite a tactical coup for the Wasps’ backroom team, they scored two first-half tries from cheeky lineout moves against an unprotected Leicester short-side, but modesty forbids Reddan from mentioning that he scored one of them, Raphael Ibanez the other.

“At Wasps that time we had 17 players and having three weeks to have everyone on the physio table and ready was beneficial,” says Reddan. “Alex King played very well in the final and was on crutches two weeks before that so that was a totally different situation.

“With the squad we have now (at Leinster) it is good to be able to give guys a shot at getting in the team and keeping competition for places up there and judging by the way we went (against Glasgow) we needed the game to improve on things.”

In any event, it is Reddan, and not Cullen or Jennings, who is thus one of only four players to have won Heineken Cup medals with two different clubs, along with Cedric Heymans and Philippe Carbonneau, who achieved the feat with Brive and Toulouse (Heymans winning four medals in total), Federico Mendez won with Bath in 1998 and Northampton in 2000.

A la Leicester in ’07, Leinster return to Twickenham this Saturday as the more battle-hardened favourites, and with the chance to emulate Leicester as back-to-back winners as well as the Wasps double of 2004.

“There is only one Heineken Cup up for grabs next week. People can talk about whatever number they want but there is just one up for grabs. It is such a massive occasion in itself, isolated, for a player to run out – to say you are underdogs or favourites has never come into it in my experience,” says Reddan, who has had other things on his mind of late, what with Aoife giving birth to their first child last week, Evie, and his battle with Isaac Boss to claim the number nine jersey.

Although Reddan has started both meetings to date against Ulster, Boss started all of last season’s three meetings, including the league semi-final, as well as the semi-final away to Clermont three weeks ago.

That Boss was also left on the bench until a three-minute cameo on the wing last week would also suggest it’s his turn to start.

Whether starting, or injecting tempo in the last 20 or 30, Reddan will have a key role. “You have got one job. It could be to catch the kick-off, then it is to pass the ball or kick the ball. That is what you focus on. You spend one second thinking about something else in that kind of environment and it is going to be gone.

“The Heineken Cup is so big that it brings a bigger kind of pressure than all this favourite or underdog tag. The media likes those tags but no one really gets there if they are not good enough. In my experience, anyway. I have gone in as massive underdogs and won and gone in as massive favourites and won.”