EOIN REDDAN WALKS into the conference room of a Dublin city centre hotel looking sharp.
He’s fresh, suited and booted. More unusual than you might expect. More often than not, rugby players are handed shorts and a jersey for this sort of promotional work, but Reddan is a rugby player no more. He retired almost four months ago and now he’s calling in on his lunchbreak from the new day job.
His career as a scrum-half ended in South Africa, after 385 games as a professional – a body of work that included 71 international caps, two Six Nations, three Heineken Cups, two Pro12 titles, a European Challenge Cup and Premiership.
Considering such a haul of medals, the Limerick man bowed out of the game in incredibly low key fashion. And he didn’t wait long to plunge himself into the new gig as a business analyst with aircraft leasing company, Avolon.
“I had eight weeks, which was plenty,” Reddan says of his post-retirement, pre-work holiday with his young family.
“We were away for a lot of it, had a great time. South Africa was great too; my brother came down and it was nice to have a few weeks when we all knew exactly what was going on in terms of whether I’d play on or not.
You don’t want it to be too long (of a run-in) either, It’s hard to keep going for 10 months when you know it’s the end, but it suited me to make the decision at the end of the season and not having too long to keep going.”
Having completed a masters degree in financial services while still a Leinster player, the transition seems to have been a smooth one for Reddan. He went through enough matches to feel his time on the field had run its course, but the absence of everyday training and preparation certainly leaves a hole.
“I do like training. I’ve played a lot of games,” he says almost with a wince, “sometimes you’re talking to a young lad who might have retired early or been out injured and missed out on stuff he hoped to achieve.
“Whereas I played so many games – I think I had over 400 (including All-Ireland League) at the end – that I realised I don’t miss them actually, which is probably a good sign that I had made the right decision.
He adds: “When they went back pre-season training I was thinking of all the work they were getting done. That was a bit weird.
“At the same time, I find I don’t really have time to think about it really, to be honest. They have me flying – it’s great, I’m loving it.”
So the boots are gathering dust on a peg and Reddan looks like a man who has shed a few of the excess pounds required to play a contact sport, but the 35-year-old’s thoughtful, pointed answers remain.
When the question of doping in rugby comes up – due to the ‘anomalies’ provided by three Racing 92 stars recently – Reddan could easily have taken the easy way out and offer a quick straight-bat question. Instead he digs in, offers his own perspective, his beliefs, his suspicions and concerns. All the while imploring us dictaphone-toting reporters that his answer could not be succinctly framed in a single sentence, but instead must be viewed as a complex 3D mesh.
“I’m trying to give you an overall picture. Doping in rugby, we’re ahead of the game in terms of being clean, because of the culture in the game. But you can’t rely on that culture to keep us there.
“You’ve got to improve doping standards and spend as much money as you can pushing them out early to keep it clean. Don’t rely on the culture we’ve built, the social pressures we put on each other to keep it clean.
There is not a mention of it, not in my 15 years playing have I ever been even close to it. I haven’t seen anything or suspected anyone. But I’d be stupid to sit here and say there’s no doping in rugby and ignore what’s coming down the line.
“Because the next year, or the year after, it is coming. So get ahead of it now, which I think they’re trying to do…”
Setting the pace rather than waiting on things to happen was always key to Reddan’s game, so he emphasises the need for a pro-active to keep rugby clean:
“I think we’re clean, but we need to stay clean and I don’t think you can rely on the culture – there’s too much ambition.
“Look at all the other sports, there was a time they were all clean.”
