O’Driscoll: I almost quit Leinster

IRELAND skipper Brian O’Driscoll admitted he was close to leaving Leinster before the arrival of the new coaching team at Donnybrook helped convince him to stay.

O’Driscoll was a big-money target for Toulouse, Biarritz, Stade Francais and Leicester until he signed a new deal with Leinster and the Irish Rugby Football Union last year.

The contract kept him in Dublin until the end of the 2007 World Cup but on Wednesday he gave Irish rugby a huge lift by extending the length of the deal until 2011.