The Celtic game is a priority

RABO DIRECT PRO12

Apprehensive is not a word that Leinster and Ireland scrum-half Eoin Reddan would use when discussing the future of the European game on the back of the demise of the Heineken Cup but he believes everyone has to be aware of the way things have changed and to be ready to adjust.

The 33-year-old Limerick man makes no secret of his desire to see the closing stages of the Pro12 over two of the next three weekends portray the game in the Celtic countries in a very positive light and that it won’t be outshone by the English and French when the European Club Championship comes on stream next season.

“Clubs, players, have to really get better at communicating the importance of the Rabo to the media and to the fans,” he asserts.

“Our home competition has to be top notch. It has to generate revenue through television. If we don’t do that, our position will become weaker and weaker as the English and French competition becomes stronger and stronger. That will put us in a very difficult position when we’re trying to put the best interests of Irish rugby on the table every time a debate comes up in Europe.

“Television and media in general don’t help when they’re criticising players and games when they could be crediting the other team. Munster-Ulster last week is an example. There was a huge story there about a bunch of young lads from Ulster coming down and putting in a great performance or you could go on about what rubbish some other aspect of the game might have been.

“People are hurting themselves. They are stakeholders in the game. They’re actually complaining about a product that they themselves are investing in. I’m talking about the reports on the TV criticising a product to which they are tied.

“In the long run, that doesn’t help. There are positives there if you look for them. It’s much harder to be positive about something. When you’re being critical about something you’re saying that you are better than it. The introduction of Sky into the Rabo probably pushes that on a bit. You’re going to have to find people who know what they are talking about, who are able to stand up and say among people who are giving out that that was actually good, that young fella from Ulster was brilliant tonight and that’s why Munster struggled as opposed to looking for cracks and big problems in Munster.”

Can this be put down to the Irish psyche, that we tend to be a nation of knockers?

“I’m not sure that’s the case,” he claimed. “If so, it has to be changed if you want long-term success in Ireland. I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with an Irish team that won the Six Nations this year and we certainly didn’t have this psyche.”

Leinster and Ulster go into battle for the second time in two weeks at the RDS this evening, and it promises to be a cracker, the kind of game that lives up to Eoin Reddan’s expectations for the Pro 12.

“Ulster have a lot to play for and have been playing really well,” he agreed.

“They’d have been first or second only for a costly defeat in Cardiff and then we wouldn’t be playing them this weekend. We haven’t been playing well. I won’t say our loss to Toulon has had a negative effect. We’ve been fighting on two fronts all year and we’re still fighting on this front. In terms of the last few weeks, maybe we weren’t up for some of those games as much as we should have been and that’s been the main issue this week, making sure that we implement the coach’s game plan and bring what he’s talking about to the table.

“It’s a semi-final and there will be parts where you have to fight everything and keep going and park the form we’ve been in.”

Interestingly, Reddan dismissed what has become known as the “Drico factor” almost as an irrelevance.

“It’s more a case of a squad wanting to perform for all the work that everyone has put in over the year. The Rabo is a reflection of your strength in depth and not just your first XV. We’ve done well in the periods when the internationals have been away. And then there’s Brian himself, because of the way he is, he ensures that it’s not about him, that it never has been. He’s joking all the time about how we’re overdoing it, that he feels he’s had enough of it.”

Reddan comes face to face again today with Ruan Pienaar, Ulster’s Springbok widely regarded as one of the game’s finest scrum-halves.

“Yeah, he’s an excellent player but we are extremely different nines,” he maintained. “I’d see myself as a facilitator in the team, knowing when to push the pace and when to hold it a bit. He probably has a much bigger impact in terms of his kicking when he kicks it 60 yards into the corner and gets his team going forward that way, whereas I might be trying to get us going forward using runners and that kind of thing.”