FRANCE v IRELAND: GERRY THORNLEYtalks to Brian O'Driscoll 10 years after he showed his remarkable promise by scoring three tries as Ireland finally laid the French bogey at the Stade de France
TEN YEARS ago. Ye Gods. Where did that decade go? Time has flown as Brian O’Driscoll has mostly enjoyed himself on the rugby pitches of the world since the day in Paris when a star was born. His life has never been the same since those hat-trick heroics. It’s a different game now, he muses. And he’s a different player and a different person?
“Yeah, all of the above.”
Revisiting Paris allows him a brief interlude for retrospection in the last of his round of Tuesday media duties as captain in the Killiney Castle Hotel. It’s a bit of an imposition but, as ever, once you get him going, he talks freely, wisely, humorously and self-deprecatingly. Indeed, he’s become quite the wise old sage.
Then, of course, he was a soldier in the trenches, whereas today he will captain Ireland for an astonishing 61st time.
He looks back and laughs at the ridiculously baggy jersey, and the gesture of index fingers and thumbs together after the first two of his three tries, which seems like both yesterday and aeons ago. Needless to say, he never fully appreciated the enormity of what he and Ireland achieved with that 27-25 win in the Stade de France, and was quite bemused by all the fuss it provoked.
“I just thought ‘we’ve won in France, what’s the big deal?’. You know, great, we’ve won a game. But subsequently you go home and discover the country went bananas for a weekend and then just everything that came with it.”
Suddenly he was being mobbed everywhere. Keith Wood had been a highly distinctive and articulate front man for Irish rugby, but overnight O’Driscoll became a star and was mobbed for autographs everywhere he went,
and he lost much of his privacy and innocence of youth for good.
“Yeah, it was strange, very strange. But perhaps it’s better to lose it suddenly in one go than gradually over a period of time. It did take a period of time to get used to but I certainly wouldn’t have changed anything.”
The previous Saturday he had met a friend of his sister’s Orin Malone in “a watering hole” and Malone had jokingly urged him to mark his next try for Ireland with “the big O”, as he was known.
“So, when I scored the try for some reason that sprung into my head. ‘Yeah, I’ll give him the Big O then, why not?’” He smiles as he recounts it. “And then I scored the second one and I did the Big O again. But when I got the third I thought ‘this is too serious now to be doing any Big O to anyone’. So I just ran back to the halfway line and tried to get my breath.”
Fast-forward 10 years and five subsequent defeats, and he appreciates the win more readily. “It’s a bloody hard to place to go and win. We’ve given up scores and it’s very hard to chase them down when they get scores up on you. They just grow with this confidence. The crowd gets behind them. The passes tend to stick that little bit more then and you’re kind of chasing shadows.
“So I’ve learned that you have to stay with them for the entirety of the game. That’s what happened that day. I don’t even think that they played badly. (Gerald) Merceron kicked seven out of seven. We just marginally got the better of them.”
As significant as any of his tries that day, or David Humprheys’ match-winning penalty, was the try-saving tackle by Denis Hickie on Marc del Maso which stopped the French from pulling away. Since then, the French have invariably pulled away.
“When you’re chasing scorelines, no matter how well you’re playing, things can go wrong. A lot of the time that happened, a scoreline of 15 points becomes 25 or 30 because teams are chasing it. They leave themselves vulnerable because they’re all out in attack and all of a sudden there’s a try at the other end. So, you have to just hang in there with France and make sure that you’re only one score away at any time and give yourself an opportunity in the last few minutes to do something. Because I do think too they have the capability of going within themselves.”
Back then too, it all came so naturally whereas now he works so much harder on his physical well-being. Then there was more to come whereas now there is less, but that only makes him more determined to wring every last drop out of his exceptional talent.
The unrelenting physicality and intensity of the modern game is, he reckons, relevant to the condition he and his peers are in nowadays. What’s changed is that defensively teams are far more organised, and “everything is a little bit more, what’s the word, strategised. There’s massive organisation to the game now. It’s more of a chess game these days than it was then”.
For example, back then, Ireland adopted Warren Gatland’s favoured, four-up blitz defence, whereas now “we pick four or five plays from a massive menu depending on the personnel and who you’re playing against”.
He reckons you can’t buy the experience he’s picked up along the way. He can adapt his defence better. He’s constantly refining his ever-improving kicking game. He’s not sure if he’s as quick. He doesn’t do speed tests and reckons he’s better off not knowing, but also estimates that he’s as quick over the first five if not over 40 or 50.
“When I have to run that length of time the parachute goes back and starts pulling my head back as well. The lads abuse me. ‘Oh the parachute’s out. Look!’”
He couldn’t remain in the trenches forever and has been obliged to assume more and more responsibility. “You’ve got to evolve and change things and the longer you are at it you have to keep mixing your game up, you know. Look at Madonna,” he says with a smile.
There have been injuries, the way he plays he was hardly likely to avoid the customary ravages of the modern game on any player. And there was even a dip, the fallow season personally of 2007-08. He was still playing good rugby, just not coming up with the big plays.
Nothing disappointed him more than the 2007 World Cup campaign when he was one of the few to maintain his form amid the flogging, but having scored against Georgia and Argentina that November, there wouldn’t be another try until the last of the summer Tests the following June in Melbourne.
In the process, he tore his hamstring again. He publicly vowed in the immediate aftermath of that season-ending game to change his personal regime. For the thoroughbred that he is, he was carrying too much weight which in turn was putting too much pressure on his hamstrings.
“A big component as well was actually finding out, working with the physios and the fitness guys, particularly in Leinster on a weekly basis, and particularly finding out a method of stretching that I’d never done before that worked a treat for me with James Allen, the physio in Leinster. Little things like that have made the big difference. I had a very minor hamstring strain last year but that’s the only time since 2008 – touch wood,” he says, as he raps the table in front of him.
With the personal rejuvenation came the rewards that, until last season, had threatened to leave his career horribly unfulfilled.
“It was a stressful existence knowing that I had played a lot but I’d never really achieved a huge amount – a couple of Magners Leagues, and an under-19 World Cup minus Australia and New Zealand. To finally go and win what you’ve chased for over a lot of years is very rewarding but I don’t think it lessens your ambition in any shape or form. In fact it probably if anything heightens it because you’ve had a taste for it, you’ve realised it’s achievable so hopefully the first one is the hardest. I still have a massive hunger for playing for another few years yet. I have to look after myself a little bit more.”
Time was when he could be a bit carefree with his God-given talents – he smiles in recalling he returned from his holidays in the States at 102 kg. “Like Gordon D’Arcy circa 1999 sort of weight,” he quips. He had missed the Irish tour but points out he never played at that weight.
“You’re able to eat, drink and act like you don’t have a care in the world whereas now I definitely have to look after myself more. But I enjoy that aspect too of it. It’s a challenge and it’s a discipline. I’m a big believer that nothing that comes easily is worth winning, it’s the hard graft that you have to put in, particularly the stuff that no one ever sees, of denying yourself.
“I’m a chocolate fiend and every so often you reward yourself but I get a big thrill of being able to see the effects of that. And that’s only a thrill that I’ll get and no one else will know about.”
It’s also in his and D’Arcy’s interests to keep themselves relatively light and twinkle-toed. Once again today they are punching above their weight, giving an estimated 12kg and 15kg to monsieurs Jauzion and Bastareaud. “I realised my footwork was a big thing for me; practising that and getting back down to a weight you’re going to be able to use your footwork when it becomes most relevant in the last 15 minutes of a game when everyone else is tired.”
Then again, he thinks back to his debut in the summer of 1999 against Australia in Brisbane.
“I looked out at the back line, Timmy Horan might not have been a huge man but he hit hard. (Danny) Herbert, (Joe) Roff, Ben Tune, (Chris) Latham, I just thought ‘These men are enormous. These are giants’. And I suppose I don’t really worry too much anymore because I’ve been a big unit myself in the past, though thankfully I’m not as big now.”
Cue today. Maybe it’s the anniversary, maybe it’s the way Mathieu Bastareaud is the latest kid on the block to seek him out at high noon, but there’s a glint in the great one’s eye. “You see 17-and-a-half stone centres; I’d like to think I’ve got better feet than him so I probably won’t run directly at him,” he quips.
Not quite the old dog yet, but with a few tricks up his sleeve all the same.
Brian O'Driscoll
BornJan 21st, 1979
Height5ft 10in (1.78m)
Weight14st 13lb (95kg)
Tests(Ireland) 97
Points205 (38 tries, 5 drop goals)
O’Driscoll is the world’s top try-scoring centre, has 21 tries in the Six Nations, an Irish record, and is now second in the all-time list behind Ian Smith on 24.
