Playing catch in the garden surrounding the colonial-style mansion of their youth in New Orleans, Peyton Manning always dominated. Quite often he was driven to despair. Eli, his younger brother by five years, dropped the ball too many times, so Peyton devised a method of taping cushions on his arms and then little brother was able to smother his passes. “Cooper [the oldest of the three Manning brothers, who is now an institutional equity broker in New Orleans] wanted Peyton to throw him the ball every time he threw it. He was the receiver in the family,” their mother, Olivia, explained, smiling. “But Eli always had a good kind of patience.”

If it was not formidable enough for this quiet, introspective kid, a mama’s boy, to follow in the footsteps of his father, Archie, an accomplished quarterback with the New Orleans Saints throughout the 1970s before he finished his career at the Houston Oilers and Minnesota Vikings, Eli Manning has also had to live in the shadow of his sibling.

A Super Bowl winner last year with the Indianapolis Colts, twice the National Football League’s (NFL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) and long regarded as one of the supreme talents in the game, the middle Manning brother was perceived to be the biggest threat to the New England Patriots’ pursuit of a flawless 19-0 win-loss season. But the San Diego Chargers shocked the Colts in the American Football Conference (AFC) Divisional Playoff game and the Patriots overcame the Chargers comfortably in the AFC Championship game last weekend to reach Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, Arizona. So it is the “other” Manning and New York Giants who will stand in their way next Sunday.

“I will be there, cheering him on, because Eli called and told me that’s what he wanted and I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Peyton declared. “I couldn’t be prouder or happier for Eli. He deserves every bit of this because of how hard he has worked.” And perhaps, too, for what he has been made to endure in a hostile, unforgiving environment. “Whatever ‘It’ Is, Eli Is Without It . . . Unfortunately, Eli’s as Good as He’s Going to Get . . . Eli’s OK - That’s the Giants’ Problem,” is just a sample of negative headlines in the New York press directed at Manning this season in which the Giants have reached their fourth Super Bowl in 21 years. The criticism has ranged from his “erratic” performances and alleged “flaws in his mechanics” to a perception that “he is not emotional enough and does not care”. The New York Times revealed that “Manning is widely being assessed as little more than an adequate quarterback” and described the Giants as “a second-tier contender” in a withering appraisal two months ago.

“We know the environment that we are in here and, obviously, you would like it to be different, but it is not,” accepted head coach Tom Coughlin.

Only four weeks ago, according to Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, Manning was still “an embattled quarterback” but in a pulsating final game to the regular season he completed 22 out of 32 passes against the Patriots for 251 yards and four touchdowns and threw only one interception. Tom Brady threw for 356 yards and the Patriots prevailed but only by a score of 38-35 after being made to overcome a deficit of 12 points in the latter stages of the third quarter, arguably the most serious test they faced to their unbeaten record all season. In the five games preceding his performance against New England, Manning’s pass completion rate was down at 45%. He had thrown only four touchdown passes and eight interceptions. Now his figures are impressive: a 64% completion rate, eight touchdowns, one interception and an average of 213 passing yards per game in his past four, including their watershed game against the team they will face once more in the Super Bowl. At Giants stadium he almost matched the peerless Brady pass for pass and in three playoff games on the road he has outmanoeuvred Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ quarterback Jeff Garcia, Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys and Brett Favre last weekend in the Giants’ 23-20 victory over the Green Bay Packers to win the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship, sealed by Lawrence Tynes’s magnificent 47-yard field goal in overtime.

“Although we lost, the final regular season game against the Patriots helped us,” Manning insisted on Friday. “We played good football and we gave ourselves a shot to win. We fell short but it got our confidence going, got us playing good football and got us back in a rhythm. From then on, we’ve been on a hot streak.”

But what of the barbs he has faced this season, even from Giants fans? Did this motivate a powerful resurgence and rekindle his chemistry with wide receiver Plaxico Burress while spawning a growing understanding with Amani Toomer and Steve Smith, increasingly reliable second and third receivers? “You just kind of learn to accept it,” he said with a shrug. “It happens after a loss sometimes. You never know when it’s going to happen or what’s going to cause it but it’s out there and you just can’t let it affect your personality or the way you are in the locker room or your approach. You’ve got to stay the same and have a good attitude about everything and show everybody that it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t affect you and you’re still going to go out there and perform. Losing games is part of football. It’s just about learning from the mistakes, seeing what you are doing well and going into the next week with a good attitude that if you win that one, you are back in a good spot and everything will be fine again.”

Perhaps it is because he was never pressured into playing at quarterback or emulating his brother or his dad that Manning has been able to take all of the sneering disapproval in his stride. “The three [boys] were so different,” Olivia Manning recalled. “Cooper pushed you to the limit, trying to see what he could get away with, but he went about it in a nice way, so you couldn’t get angry. Peyton was the opposite. He was more serious, more businesslike, definitely a take-charge person. Eli was definitely the quietest of the three. He was laid-back, easy-going, calm, didn’t have a lot to say and he never seemed to get rattled.”

Super Bowl Sunday will test this coolness under pressure which appears to epitomise the “other” Manning. Eli and Peyton will share the distinction of being the only brothers to start at quarterback in a Super Bowl - their own little niche in history, the origins of which are rooted in a garden in New Orleans - but destiny will be on the side of the all-conquering Patriots in Arizona.