O’Driscoll ready to silence the doubters

THE 2008 RBS Six Nations Championship may be only two games old, but Brian O’Driscoll’s form has never come under so much scrutiny since the day he first broke onto the senior side on tour in Australia in 1999.

The country’s all-time top try scorer (31 in 81 Tests) hasn’t crossed the whitewash since returning from the 2007 Rugby World Cup for either province or country, while his leadership qualities have also been questioned.

Indeed, praise for Ireland’s second half revival against France has been attributed to Ronan O’Gara’s inspirational pre-match team talks.

However, for someone who has seen and done it all, it’d come as no surprise if O’Driscoll did cut loose against Scotland in Croke Park on Saturday and closed the drawn-out inquest into his recent form.

The Dubliner, who wins his 82nd cap against the Scots, has been quite bullish, saying he’s “pretty happy” with his game, highlighting his high tackle count and multiple ball carries during the 26-21 defeat to Les Bleus in Paris as evidence of a man on a mission to rediscover past glories.

“I’ve looked at all my stats from that game and my form is way closer to where I would want to be at,” the 29-year-old says.

“I think I made 15 tackles in the last game. I carried more than any back other than Rog (O’Gara). This game isn’t about stats but it’s nice to check up on what you are achieving.”

One reason, perhaps, for his dearth of tries may be that defences have become ultra-organised and water-tight in recent years.

Given O’Driscoll’s status as the best centre in the world, it is not overstating matters to say he’s a marked man each time he takes the field.

“When you play nine seasons, people are going to keep a close eye on you,” he says.

“You’re more of a known quantity and they’re going to know what you’re good at. There hasn’t been a huge amount of room and people have been keeping an eye on stopping a huge amount of what I have to do. I have to realise as well — and I’ve said this for years — that if such is the case, there has to be space elsewhere and it’s a case of exploiting that space. It’s about remaining patient and waiting for the opportunities and not trying to force your game because gone are the days when you’re going to get free-rein.

“Analysis is huge these days. It all makes it much tougher to break down defences and make those long runs, make the incisions that, in other years, I might have been allowed to do.”

O’Driscoll’s participation on Saturday remains in doubt owing to a tight hamstring, an injury that forced him to miss the France game in last year’s Six Nations. However he’s upbeat about starting: “You get them every so often and hopefully it’s nothing too serious.”

If deemed fit, he’ll renew his midfield partnership with Andrew Trimble, whom he describes as “easy to work with”.

Says the Ireland skipper: “Darce (Gordon D’Arcy) and myself developed a partnership and maybe we were both selfish trying to get our hands on the ball. From Trims’ (Andrew Trimble) point of view, he’s very good at certain things but very understanding to the needs of the team. Not that Darce wasn’t. Trims will swap and change here and there and if you tell him to do a roll, he’ll do it.

“It’s very easy to work with someone in that way but certainly from a defensive point of view, we’ve clicked quite well. It (defence) was one part of his game that I thought was always very, very strong. We were mixing and matching and defending at 12 and 13 and he’s comfortable in either position. I think we’ll only get better as a combination.”

Coming off the back of a strong second half display against France, O’Driscoll says he always knew a big performance was in the team since the start of this year’s Championship. “There was a realisation of the level we are capable of playing at. We knew that a big performance — and I’m not saying the whole France game was a big performance. Far from it — but it wasn’t far away.

“Even when we conceded the few tries that we did in the game, any time I spoke behind the post it was all about, ‘let’s not change anything, let’s just continue playing the way we are because we’re playing some good stuff’. And when it came good in the second we had them in trouble. It didn’t surprise anyone the way we played because we felt we had that performance in us.

“I don’t think it’s been a case of flicking a switch and saying, ‘now the confidence is back’. The confidence was there — it was a just some of the technical aspects let us down.”