INTERVIEW BRIAN O'DRISCOLL: GERRY THORNLEYfinds Ireland's captain raring to go and looking forward to locking horns again with the Springboks
WHEN THE International Rugby Board announces its shortlist for the end-of-year World Player of the Year awards, Brian O’Driscoll is sure to be a front-runner. A starring role on his third Lions’ tour augmented a season in which he captained Ireland to a first Grand Slam in 61 years and helped steer Leinster to a first ever Heineken Cup.
He also, as an aside, was the Six Nations player of the tournament, its joint leading try-scorer, the Irish Players’ Player of the Year and the leading try scorer in the Heineken Cup. Not bad for a player who, at this juncture a year ago, was deemed by some to be past it.
The problem, of course, is how do you top that? “It’s difficult to top, I suppose you attempt to go out and emulate it,” he admitted yesterday. “You just go out and try and play better rugby too. But sometimes even if you play better rugby, you wouldn’t be able to achieve that. I don’t think it’s about trying to go out and compare and contrast, it’s about going out and looking at a new year and the freshness that goes with it and trying to improve collectively and individually with all the sides you’re involved in.”
Not that last season’s achievements in Irish rugby have been coldly cast aside, never to be mentioned again, as the squad seek to set new targets and ambitions for themselves – O’Driscoll admitting that by deliberately revisiting past achievements he revived his waning confidence a year ago.
“Last season is still there as a source of confidence. I think as much as you do shelve these things, you have to look back and I was low on confidence this time last year and I just had to look back on some good moments and refresh yourself. So I did that and it seemed to work. You just stay on top of things when you are feeling good and feed off that.”
O’Driscoll and his fellow Lions are still in pre-season, but they are likely to return in round four (when Leinster travel to high-flying Edinburgh) before the two Irish heavyweights lock horns in round five at the RDS and then return to the Heineken Cup: the European champions kick off at home to London Irish.
He is, he admits, itching for a game. “Yeah really looking forward to it. Pre-season is hard going. You don’t mind the first three or four weeks because you’ve had holidays and you’re willing to put that hard graft in. But then when it drags on after that, it just becomes tiresome. You get sick of being in the gym and not actually playing games at weekends. So I think anyone that’s still in pre-season is itching to get going.”
Leinster will now know what it’s been like for Munster in ’07 and ’09, when they failed to retain their Heineken Cup crown, and ditto Ireland. Any team O’Driscoll plays for this season will be more of a prized scalp than ever before.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that you’re there to be shot down but any time that I’ve been involved in taking on a previous Heineken Cup champion or Grand Slam team you do put extra emphasis into it when you play against them, that’s just life. As much as you’d like to say you treat each game the exact same there’s certain games that you do treat that little bit more because you know that if you don’t turn up on the day, you could get annihilated. Or you know that the potential for bragging rights is there. But we’ll just go out and play as we have always done. We won’t worry about burdens that success has brought, we’ll just go out and enjoy it.”
The exception may be against South Africa, reigning World and Tri-Nations champions and foremost side on the planet. While they may have one eye on the 2011 World Cup on their end-of-year November tour, the sight of the Boks clinching the Tri-Nations last Saturday in Hamilton merely whets the appetite for the clash at Croke Park on Saturday, November 28th.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way but yeah. It’s for you guys to build up the whole North versus Southern hemisphere (thing) and reigning Tri-Nations against reigning Grand Slam winners,” he said, albeit billing the match pretty nicely himself.
“We just treat it as a one-off game and you’ve to try and beat the Springboks any time you play against them and it won’t be any different this time round.”
But renewing acquaintances so soon after the Lions series is, he conceded, to be welcomed. “You want to pit yourself against the best teams in the world as often as you possibly can and they’re certainly the best team in the world at the moment.”
Aside from having many of the world’s best players, O’Driscoll added: “They’ve been clinical when they needed to be. A good side. They’re just playing really smart rugby, they’re not making a huge amount of mistakes. Their kicking game is excellent.
“They’re picking off, when teams make mistakes, they’re just punishing them. It’s a combination of a really simple game plan done extremely well. That along with an enormous pack,” he concluded with a smile.
And, of course, if Ireland themselves stand still they’ll go backwards. “Absolutely. You have to improve. Whether you win or not, you still have to try and look to improve things. If you just look to maintain then you go backwards. It’s a matter of improving even small things – three, four or five per cent in different areas of the game. Certainly I think our attacking game can improve considerably and hopefully that will come with a bit of confidence as well.”
