O’Driscoll aware of the pitfalls of the veteran

IN the days before last year’s Heineken Cup quarter-final for Munster against Harlequins, I was asked about retirement by the press. I said at the time if anyone was enjoying their career as much as I was, why would they want to walk away from it?

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.