O’Driscoll aware of the pitfalls of the veteran
Then I went and retired at the end of the season, not because I’d stopped enjoying playing for Munster — nothing will ever match that intoxicating high — but because thoughts turned to how I wanted to be remembered. Not for legacy, more for the danger that I’d become the boxer who never heard the last bell and took one uppercut too many.
It’s important you finish somewhere near the top of your game because that’s the memory that will stick with people. Sentiment in professional sport is an orphan, and I know that over the last few months Brian O’Driscoll has looked in the mirror and asked himself these questions.
He’s 35 in January and he’s aware that with a sub-standard season, he won’t be short of people telling him he stayed one season too long.
We’ve talked things through and my tuppence worth is that O’Driscoll is dead right to play on, if Brian wants to play on. For Leinster, his performances will ensure he stays as relevant as before. Not only is he an outstanding 13 but he can be an outstanding 12 as well. He’s invaluable to Leinster and a birth cert won’t dilute that.
The key issue is at international level. Presumably this is something Brian and Joe Schmidt have spoken in detail about but the question remains: does Brian play all the way through this season and next year for Ireland? Even though it’s the business of winning in the short term, Schmidt will also be looking at continuity and partnership building with one eye on the 2015 World Cup in England. With Brian finishing at the end of this season, it’s a tricky one for Joe to balance.
O’Driscoll has experienced the painful end of decision-making with the Lions this summer, so nothing in professional sport is a surprise to those who play it. If it can happen to Brian on a Lions tour, then no one is immune.
Roy Keane has said that players are only pieces of meat and if you think like that, you don’t get hurt as badly. It’s the ones who have eyes on themselves rather than the bigger picture that those issues arise.
O’Driscoll does not belong in the latter category.
He looked in decent shape for Leinster against Cardiff last weekend, but of more fascination is the decision making by new coach Matt O’Connor on the out-half slot. I could understand their viewpoint if Leinster felt Jimmy Gopperth was sufficiently better than Ian Madigan, that they’d feel compelled to play him. But for Irish and Leinster rugby it has to be Madigan. O’Connor will win games with Madigan just as frequently as he will with Gopperth. It’s not like there is a gulf between them.
The 10 debate in Munster is not so exercised. Yet. Rob Penney has handed the baton to Ian Keatley and it will be interesting to see how his season develops — but no more interesting than the progress JJ Hanrahan will make this campaign.
Munster may be a small bit fearful going into tomorrow’s Pro 12 derby against Leinster and in particular, whether the schedule has them sufficiently up to the tempo they’ll need to be at in Thomond Park. They’ve played the two Italian teams, Edinburgh and the Dragons, not the most robust challenges they’ll face this season.
But the most pleasing thing about Munster is I’m hearing it’s a very happy camp. That’s vital because happy people are happy players. Fitness coach Bryce Cavanagh deserves huge credit, as does Aidan O’Connell, and the other fitness staff. The feedback from Munster’s pre-season is that it was a phenomenal success with GPS training, and almost obsessive attention to detail. The head coach is now bedded in and his coaching team have all the individual training programs fine-tuned, everything now measured scientifically rather than from a trial and error perspective.
Rob came from an NPC set-up where he had more between-games time whereas here, it’s a monster of a game. Everything is new to him and I now know what that’s like, being in Paris, where everyday is about survival. If you are able to paddle at the start you are doing well.
Now he’s putting his own imprint on Munster and developing cutting edge prehab programmes for the province’s seasoned players like Donnacha Ryan (almost 30!), James Coughlan, Donncha O’Callaghan, James Downey and Casey Laulala. Forget Paul O’Connell. He’s a freak who monitors himself.
While every person will have their own view on the proposed one-centre training base in Limerick, it’s only players who will be operating in this changed environment whose feedback is relevant. Already though rumour has it that David Kilcoyne is disappointed not to be moving to the bright lights of Cork!
WAS the old Cork-Limerick system redundant? Well, we did win two Heineken Cups with two centres, though some might argue it was in spite of two centres. I always felt it was imperative from the months June to September that it was one base we used, because you need to manage the bulk of pre-season efficiently. But once you get back playing a game a week, a lot of your time from Wednesday on would be resting anyway.
Munster plan to have the new training facility ready for pre-season in 2015 and irrespective of whether the players sleep in Cork or Limerick, it remains fundamental they reside in the community that serves Munster rugby so well. Only when you start messing with that are you asking for trouble.
It won’t be the Irish face-off that is Munster-Leinster, but around the same time tomorrow night as that kicks off, Racing Metro will welcome Grenoble to Paris, Bernard Jackman, Mike Prendergast and all. A bed is on offer to both. Racing’s best performance of a 5-3 season thus far came in Castres last weekend, even in defeat.
The idiosyncratic tendencies of French referees were presented in all their madness before half-time when we scored a perfectly good try. The referee asked the TMO to advise him and was informed there was no reason not to award the try. He then decided not to give it himself. We left three other tries out there and lost 19-15. Hugely frustrating but things are beginning to happen.
Jonny Sexton has done very well thus far. He’s very serious about what he does, very demanding and that’s a shock to some of the French players. But he knows what he wants, he has great knowledge of the game. He understands how to break down defences, he’s trying to relay that to his colleagues but it’s hard because occasionally it’s lost in translation. His French is good, but we speak a different French to the locals.
