Mick O'Driscoll tells Gerry Thornley why the Perpignan sojourn has smartened up his game
From the frying pan to the fire. Not many prodigal sons will return home to Munster with tales of even more partisan support but Mick O'Driscoll has managed it. Be it with Munster or Perpignan these past seven years, losing at home, it seems, is basically just not an option - or at any rate, you'd want to leave the car engine running.
"They are absolutely amazing," O'Driscoll says, almost still in wonderment of the Catalan fans in the Stade Aime Giral, where the 13,500 capacity are practically within breathing distance of the protagonists.
"In my two years there we lost only one game at home, and that was to Wasps in the Heineken Cup. I've heard comparisons with Thomond Park and I think it is a good comparison, but in Perpignan they take it even a slight bit further. They are that bit more emphatic in terms of support for their own team. Because they are Catalans, they have that chip on their shoulder.
"They want to be considered French, and they don't want to be considered Spanish. They have that inbuilt history and passion. They feel as if they are always proving themselves and expressing their individual identity."
USAP, or Union Sportive Arlequins Perpignan, are a prime manifestation of that and even by French standards they are blindly loyal.
"Referees come in for an awful lot of stick. Even when it is a blatantly obvious fault by a Perpignan player, they still go nuts. After every game six or eight security men accompany the referee and touch judges off the pitch. It's the only place you see it in rugby, and they pull the tunnel out onto the pitch to stop fans pelting players and officials."
The flip side of all this, of course, is Perpignan's typically French difficulty on their travels. O'Driscoll reckons they won significantly fewer than half their away games in his two-year sojourn there, though Leinster might beg to differ given the semi-final of three seasons ago.
A prime example was last season's European Cup. Pound for pound, they often looked the best team in a pool that included the Dragons, Newcastle and Edinburgh, yet contrived to lose all three away games while winning all three at home.
"If things go wrong in the first five minutes, they just run out the gate," admits O'Driscoll.
Two years ago, O'Driscoll had reached a crossroads. Paul O'Connell and Donncha O'Callaghan, if fit, had closed the door to the first team. He admits he was in a something of a comfort zone and, owing to the demands of a career that had seen him play for the Irish under-19s and under-21s while breaking into the Munster team before his 20th birthday, "unlike most young people I'd never really had the chance to travel".
"Unfortunately, it didn't work out as I would have hoped because of the injuries," he reflects. In his first season in France he was sidelined for three and a half months with a knee ligament injury, then was rendered hors de combat for four and a half months with a dislocated shoulder.
Last November he cracked two bones and damaged both ligaments in his ankle, and after one game back for the first team he injured his ankle again in a seconds match.
"Yet I really enjoyed my time there and I still played 35 games in two years, which wasn't too bad considering the injuries I had."
In his first year there were appearances in the semi-finals (beating Toulouse) and final (losing to Stade Francais) of the French championship, and a fair proportion of time at number eight, which he says is common enough for locks in France to increase coaches' options, all of which made him a better player.
"It's the whole experience: learning new ideas, new coaches. It's completely different from the rugby I would have experienced here so it can't but have been a positive impact on my rugby."
For better or worse, he describes the coaching there as "much more open".
"Everything here is more set, whether it's set plays or phase plays, you really know what you're doing about four plays ahead. Over there, literally you might call one move off set ball and then after that you play it as you see it. There's no set plays either. You completely play it as you see it - just go and hit the guy," he says, smiling.
Yet he maintains the unpredictability of the French clubs might help explain why they are doing so well in Europe.
On the face of it, Munster must seem the same as ever: his old coach, many of his old team-mates. Au contraire.
"There's been huge changes. The professionalism of the whole set-up, as regards everything, has moved on. I'm not saying things were bad before, but there's been a huge step forward, what with fitness coaches and a defensive coach."
Older, yet still only 26, better and mentally stronger for his French sojourn, O'Driscoll is still vying with O'Callaghan and O'Connell, while the emergence of Trevor Horgan has given Munster almost as many riches in the secondrow as they have in the backrow.
No slouch in his first stint with his home province - he was one of the try scorers in the so-called Miracle Match - O'Driscoll has caught the eye in this second coming. Excellent in the air, at lineouts and restarts, looking stronger in contact, he's come up with big lineout steals on the opposition throw at the death to help seal wins over Northampton and the Borders. Most of all, he's delighted to be back and grateful for an injury-free run of rugby.
"I just think that maybe it's given a bit of freshness to my game. I'm still relatively young and I realise you have to take every chance you get in this team, but this is maybe a make or break for me in a way. If it doesn't happen in the next year or two for me, it's possibly not going to happen at all."
Position: Lock
Clubs: Cork Constitution, Perpignan
Province: Munster
School: PBC Cork
Date of birth: 8/10/1978
Height: 1.95m/6ft 5ins
Weight: 111kg/17st 7lbs
Munster caps: 57
Munster debut: v Neath September 1998 (HC)
International caps: 2 (debut replacement v Romania, Bucharest, June 2001)
