Where are they now? Wasps 2007 Heineken Cup winners - Ruck

Where are they now? Wasps 2007 Heineken Cup winners

Long before their move to Coventry, this Wasps team captured the club’s second European Cup in four years. So what happened to the class of ’07?

The unfancied Londoners, champions in 2004, out-thought and outmuscled the Treble-chasing Tigers in front of a record crowd for a club game of 81,076.

Wasps scored first-half tries from scrum-half Eoin Reddan and hooker Raphael Ibanez and Alex King kept the scoreboard ticking after the break.

Here is what happened to the full XV:

FULLBACK: DANNY CIPRIANI

When Cipriani made his England debut in 2008 aged 20 he was touted as a great hope for the future and expected to be there or thereabouts at fly-half for years to come. But the 13 caps he won in that years remain, to date, his only international honours. In the summer of 2010 he joined the Melbourne Rebels before he returned to England in 2013, signing a three-year deal with Sale. He then rejoined Wasps in 2016 but will depart the Ricoh in the summer.

DID YOU KNOW: Cipriani is mixed-race; his father is Afro-Trinidadian with some Italian heritage while his mother is English.

WINGER: PAUL SACKEY

He was selected as part of England’s squad for the 2007 Rugby World Cup and went on to be the team’s top try scorer with four. The winger maintained his prolific record, scoring three tries during the 2008 Six Nations. In February 2010, Sackey announced that he would be leaving Wasps to take up a lucrative contract with French Top 14 side Toulon before joining Stade Francais 2011. Two years later he ended his career with Harlequins.

DID YOU KNOW: He is an expert on the life of Cicero, and published a monograph on his role in the fall of the Roman Republic in 2008.

OUTSIDE-CENTRE: FRASER WALTERS

The man of the match in the final, Waters left Wasps at the end of May 2008 to play for Treviso in Italy and hung up his boots there in 2012.

DID YOU KNOW: He was widely credited with orchestrating Wasps’ renowned “blitz defence”


INSIDE-CENTRE: JOSH LEWSEY

The 2003-World Cup winner retired completely from the game in 2009 before making a short comeback in 2011 for Wasps. Took over as the Head of Rugby at the Welsh Rugby Union in September 2013 following his brief tenure as acting CEO of Cornish Pirates.  He resigned in November 2015, citing personal reasons which would prevent him from dedicating himself to the position full-time.

DID YOU KNOW: Lewsey graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 2001 and was commissioned as a troop commander into the Royal Artillery
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