Eager Reddan ready to get back in business

IT WOULD have taken every last man in Declan Kidney’s squad a good week or two to flush the disappointment of New Zealand from their systems but it took Eoin Reddan a bit longer than the rest.

The World Cup bequeathed the Leinster scrum-half a nasty chest infection that refused to bow to two courses of antibiotics and a battery of steroids and it was only late last week when the battle to full health swung his way.

It was a horrible little postscript to a tournament that didn’t go as he would have planned. Though he featured in all five games, the man from Limerick only started the pool win against Australia. Come the quarter-final, Conor Murray was jammed in the box-seat.

That can’t have been easy.

At Wasps, Reddan was the undisputed number nine and he harvested most of the game time on offer when he first relocated to Dublin in the summer of 2009 but that began to change in year two when Isaac Boss ventured down the M1 from Ravenhill.

Suddenly, Reddan was being asked to share his jersey with a colleague and that has coincided with much the same scenario when the shirt involved is green. Of his 37 Irish caps, 19 have come as a starter, 18 as a replacement.

With Leinster last year, the split was 13 to 9 and Joe Schmidt’s preference for the more physical Isaac Boss on European trips continues in Montpellier today. No wonder Reddan admits he is eager to get some minutes in the bag.

“I am, but at the same time there’s a massive ethos at Leinster — just like there was at the World Cup — about what’s best for the team. It’s very important and it’s not always easy from everyone’s point of view but it was a massive strength of (Leinster’s) at the end of last season. There were different teams going out every week.

“Teams know how to play against you but you can make subtle changes that make a big difference. So it’s important that everyone buys into what’s going on and doesn’t really worry too much about what’s being thought outside the camp. If you do that, it gives you a massive edge over other teams where that mightn’t be happening.”

It may be a predictable response for any player to offer in that position but it is delivered with conviction and Reddan isn’t exactly mopping about. He is all bonhomie before, during and after the interview both with the media and his fellow players.

There was a time when he carried a reputation as a rather edgy interviewee but that hasn’t been apparent during his time at Leinster, where his answers tend to be as thoughtful as they are lengthy and that has made some view him as officer material when he retires.

His interest in coaching is lukewarm. He speaks with admiration and awe about the hours Schmidt puts in and how the Kiwi can give a tighthead prop technical advice one second and do the same with a full-back the next but Reddan knows his apples from his oranges too.

He can hold court about the nature of specific regional rivalries in the south of France and it goes without saying that he has his work done on Montpellier. This week’s DVD sessions will have helped but, as an unabashed fan of their coach Fabien Galthie, they were probably refreshers rather than new material.

Galthie was a scrum-half who boasted the full set of skills but he has leaned on a gargantuan pack in his quest to shake Montpellier from the torpor of mid to lower-table mediocrity in the Top 14 but Leinster know what to expect from the territorial locals.

That much was made clear to Reddan recently when he asked Damian Browne for a peek into the French mindset at home. When Browne was at Brive, the other forwards would be crying in the dressing room before games, before moving to a separate room where they “beat the crap out of each other”.

That emotion will only be peeked by the fact that today marks their debut in the Heineken Cup. The locals will be baying for the blood of the European champions and Reddan is all but certain to get the call from the bench at some point or other. He’s more than ready to answer it.