Richard and Wells ready for shoot-out

Dean Richards and John Wells have been fighting their way out of tight corners ever since they escaped from the tightest one of all - at gunpoint.

Seventeen years after living to tell the tale of their European debut with Leicester, the pair brace themselves for tomorrow's Heineken Cup Final against Munster before a 74,000 crowd at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and the win that would confirm the Tigers' status as Europe's supreme club.

They go into the match confident that nothing could go quite as horribly wrong as it did during their hair-raising first trip to the continent during an end-of-season tour. It might easily have been their last.

A Saturday night out in the Alpine resort of Chambery, France, resulted in Richards and Wells being embroiled in an Anglo-French tete-a-tete that deteriorated rapidly enough for a gun to be pulled on the future Leicester manager and their coach.

Discretion being the better part of valour, Richards and Wells did what they had never done before or since. They surrendered. 'We put our hands up and backed away,' said Wells. 'I was trying to pacify things but it wasn't one of those situations where language, any language, would have been much help. 'We were walking down the street when Dean took some abuse from some blokes and it got out of hand. This guy was holding a gun at my head and then pointing it at Dean. No shots were fired but it was only when we sobered up the next morning, we thought: "Bloody hell!".' Neither has willingly taken a backward step since during an alliance that spanned 13 years in the Leicester back row and four more running the most successful club in the game.

They first met as 16-year-olds during a schools match in 1979 and have been on the same side ever since. Leicester put them in charge in February 1998, since when they've won all four Premiership titles and conquered Europe. Leicester will be without Leon Lloyd and scrum-half Jamie Hamilton is standing by to partner Austin Healey while Munster wing Anthony Horgan is out after breaking his hand.