THE HEINEKEN Cup final is fast approaching, with the Lions tour to South Africa hard on its heels and Europe's best rugby player is proving as elusive off the field as he is on it. I am promised a chat with Brian O'Driscoll on Tuesday morning and spend several days waiting for BODo, until a cheery Irish accent eventually emerges from my mobile phone on Friday afternoon.
First impressions suggest that the centre of attention is a typical Irishman with plenty to say and little shyness in saying it. Never mind kiss, I'd guess he's reached at least second base with the Blarney Stone, for "Drico" (no-one calls him BOD) b
lethers away with scarcely a pause for breath. Then again he's not exactly a novice at this media malarky.
Last week alone you could have heard him on Radio Four's Today programme and the Chris Evans show. He coached some kids at his old school last Sunday, attended a dinner in London on Tuesday and then missed his flight back to Dublin. Just another chapter in the life of Brian.
"It's just been mad," O'Driscoll explains. "I said I was going to do absolutely nothing other than train next week so any sponsor that wanted anything done had to do it this week.
"I had to sign 20 shirts this morning, they had to be sent back, and I have to speak to someone at 1pm today and then Eddie O'Sullivan's ghost writer rings me and asks for half an hour so I'm meeting him later and then I had a friend's girlfriend ring me up and ask me to do a piece to camera for a charity ball that will be held while we are in South Africa and on Wednesday night I got home from an HSBC dinner in London and then I had to do a Q&A for another sponsor and then trying to fit training in around all this so it's pretty much been non-stop. At 5pm this evening I will shut up shop and not do anything."
Except that later in the conversation it emerges that O'Driscoll is doing something next week, a Monday session with some children who have won an HSBC competition to train with the Lions. The merry-go-round may slow down but not so much that the star attraction can ever jump off, presuming, of course, that he wants to.
No story of O'Driscoll's rise in the sport is complete without mention of his father, Frank, who has been his manager and agent, his confidant and confessor this last decade. Of all the many and various things that Frank did for his son over the years, nothing will ever match his move to enrol young Brian into Blackrock College.
Up to that time, junior had barely touched a rugby ball, instead concentrating on soccer and Gaelic football. He was a manic Manchester United fan and his early sporting hero was striker Mark Hughes rather than Ollie Campbell or Tony Ward. He might even have been lost to his first love were it not for a change of school.
"I used to be a bigger Man U fan than I am now. I still keep an eye on them but it's harder to be a Man U fan now than it was back in the 1980s in Liverpool's heyday when United used to finish 11th or 12th in the league. I'd probably prefer to play in the (football's] Champions League final than (rugby's] European Cup just because it's a bigger stage, there are going to be more people watching and, as a sportsman, you want to play in the biggest events."
"I suppose I got to the age when trials were going on as a 12-year-old and that was when I made the transition from soccer to rugby. It was when (soccer] scouts came over to have a look and I got scouted to go to a better team in Dublin. Before there was any chance to go to England I changed schools and it was rugby from there on in."
A good job too. He scored four tries in the last Six Nations and won the man of the tournament award for his efforts. His display against England when he grabbed a drop goal and a try as his team won by one point at Croke Park was described by one elderly Irish pundit as "the best by an Irish captain in living memory". He may have lost half a yard of pace but not one iota of his competitive instincts and O'Driscoll dragged his team to victory that day by sheer force of will as much as anything else. Ireland went on to win their first Grand Slam in 61 years and now the centre's underachieving club, Leinster, has finally made it through to next Saturday's Heineken Cup final at Murrayfield.
It's impossible to begrudge the man his current success since the Irish skipper has seen the flip side too, and not so very long ago. Ireland suffered a calamitous World Cup campaign in 2007 and O'Driscoll took his share of the blame, and some. The once peerless centre was said to be too slow and too long in the tooth with too many miles on the clock; never the same since that spear tackle did for his last Lions tour. If the shoulder had healed was there still a hurt festering in his head at the injustice?
"First of all I disagree with you on the form front," he reasons. "I came back from the injury and within six months I had won the Six Nations Player of the Tournament award. So I certainly don't think I struggled for form then. I think my form dipped after the Six Nations in 2007, from the World Cup onwards. But I thought I was playing as well as ever (immediately] after the injury so I don't think it had any mental hold on me. You can talk about justice not being done but none of that is in my mind. I just get on with things; that's the way I play it."
In any event the Irishman argues that tries are a poor way to judge a rugby player – "it's not about scoring four tries in the Six Nations, that means nothing to me" – but they tell some sort of story. After scoring just one in the 2008 calendar year, O'Driscoll has already grabbed four in 2009 and there are still another six Tests before Christmas. Something must have happened for his form to return in such spectacular fashion and a sit down with Leinster coach Michael Cheika was the start.
"I'd already decided that I had to lose some weight myself with the conditioning staff," says the self-confessed chocoholic. "With Michael I just said: 'Well OK, I need to progress and become a better player so what's the best way of doing that?' We set out some team goals and some individual goals and we went from there."
It seems to have worked, with O'Driscoll competing in his first Heineken Cup final next weekend before flying out to South Africa in search of his first ever series win with the Lions at the third attempt. Two huge back-to-back challenges with the odds stacked firmly against Dublin's favourite son, especially after investing so much emotional capital in that epic Heineken Cup semi-final victory over Munster in front of 82,000 fans at Croke Park.
"There is no point winning the semi if you don't win the final. It's as simple as that," O'Driscoll says of next Saturday's match. "No-one will remember a big semi-final if you lose the final so you have to do it all again. Obviously Leicester are seasoned in Heineken Cup finals, they've won a couple and lost too. Fact of the matter is that they are the form team of the moment, they are playing with huge confidence.
"Meanwhile it's just getting harder and harder for the Lions in the professional era. The tours are so short and in seven weeks you have to get a bunch of individuals playing like a team against a team that's been together for three or four years. South Africa's players will have played with each other 20, 30, 40 times against guys who have hardly met each other. It's going to be a massive challenge."
At least it is one that O'Driscoll looks in better shape to tackle than he has done for a long time. The Lions cannot afford another humiliation and the squad boasts too few world class players in their ranks to overlook O'Driscoll. The Lions badly need to see the best of the iconic Irishman come the summer and, given his last outing in a red shirt, he needs it even more.
Brian O'Driscoll is an HSBC Lions ambassador. HSBC, the principal partner of the British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa, is committed to grass roots with the world's largest programme of rugby festivals – www.lionsrugby.com.
