Still in love with the game

He is preparing for the end now.

The player agency he set up with Duffer, the app he is launching this week – small pieces that are being pushed into place for the day when he finally hands over those iconic number 13 jerseys to the next generation and dons the civvies for good. Will it be in the summer? Will he wring another cherished year out of himself? Who knows? He won’t talk about it. Not now. Not when there are games to be won, boxes still to be ticked. A fourth Heineken Cup, with the final to be played in Dublin. November Tests. Another Six Nations. One last Lions tour.

What a way it would be to bow out and yet who amongst us wants to see him leave? What’s clear is that, had he the choice, he would continue to play forever. He would be rugby’s Peter Pan. As he sat down to chat earlier this week, that boyish love of the game was as obvious as the trademark smirk on his face. After, appropriately enough, 13 years of professional rugby, he still talks about the game like a breathless child at Christmas.

“I do love going in every day and trying to get better. The only thing that would stop me is if I started losing interest or the body gave up.

“People say that when they get to retirement that they miss the boys, but you really do. The laugh you have ... you kind of pinch yourself sometimes that you’re at work and you get to hang out and have a laugh.

“Because it’s cyclical. Young guys come through and you get to live your life vicariously through them for a while and I suppose I was that person once upon a time and it’s great fun.

“Things like bus journeys to the game and to the airport — you just have such a great laugh. It’s very easy going and I could think of a lot harder things to do in my existence.”

All in all, he’s in a good place right now. The ankle he rolled in last week’s defeat of Munster at Lansdowne Road has healed and, after years of clocking in for work with a dodgy shoulder, he is once again experiencing what it is like to do his nine-to-five at full pelt thanks to the operation on the troublesome joint last season. It’s easy now to forget just how precarious his situation was at the time. O’Driscoll announced his impending surgery on a cold, cheerless November day out the back of Leinster’s old training facility and spoke honestly and openly about the possibility of never being able to play again. It was a slim possibility but one that existed and had to be contemplated.

It’s no wonder then that he talks giddily about the joy of being able to compete in the daily weight-lifting sessions out at UCD, about the “little kicks” he gets out of each small win whether it be a heavier dumbbell, a fraction of a second off a split time or a game of table tennis. Best of all is the knowledge he doesn’t need to fear another stinger every time he goes into contact and he intends to appreciate every pain-free minute of it. He talks with undiluted admiration of Damien Duff with whom he has set up the players agency. The winger is just six weeks younger than O’Driscoll and possesses a 4% body fat ratio which was described as “unnatural” by his Fulham boss Martin Jol in a newspaper interview last Sunday. “The best professional I’ve ever seen,” added the Dutchman.

O’Driscoll has noted the Ballyboden man’s resurgence this season and how, even when he is off-duty, his regimen remains one dedicated to squeezing every last drop from his career, and it is an approach he has adopted himself. There was a time when could be spotted out and about in Dublin at fairly regular intervals on his down time but not anymore.

“It’s everything,” he says when asked to expand on what the term professionalism embraces. “It’s all encompassing. It’s about denying yourself certain things and pushing yourself through the pain barrier and out of the comfort zone, reacting positively to criticism and trying to turn it into a good thing. It’s everything.

“Socialising, from going out once in a blue moon as opposed to every weekend or every second weekend. When you’re going out to dinner, what’s your option to eat? All those small things add to your level of professionalism and, if I compare myself to 10 years ago, they’re worlds apart.”

He hurts more now than he did then, too. Not just in the physical sense. The emotional cost of defeat is far more crippling than it was when he was 23 but that might also have something to do with the fact he is less familiar with the concept of defeat – certainly with Leinster – than he was back in the early noughties.

When he started playing senior rugby, Leinster was an idea more than a club. Home was a dilapidated Donnybrook, senior coaches had the expected life span of a cat in a kennel and the team had a knack of being good enough to warrant expectations but not quite good enough to match them.

That was never more evident than in 2003, the last time the final was pencilled in for Lansdowne Road, when Matt Williams’ side fluffed their lines in the semi-final at the same ground against Perpignan. O’Driscoll tore a hamstring after an hour and looked on helplessly as the province had a narrow lead prised slowly from their grip.

It’s on such memories that he leans for support as he brushes away the inevitable questions about Leinster’s bid to defend their title on their own turf next May. Even probes about the December back-to-back with Clermont Auvergne are stopped at the door. If your name isn’t the Exeter Chiefs this week, O’Driscoll isn’t letting you in. “They’re a good team,” he says. “A very good team. And they’re very much that — a team. They mightn’t have that many galacticos but they have a real team mentality and they play very hard for one another. They’re technically very good, very efficient, a hard team to beat.

“It’s very funny because they’ve gone behind in certain games. You think it’s all over and they’ve fought their way back. I switched off their game against Northampton after Northampton scored a couple of tries. I turned (the TV) back on and Exeter were ahead. They are not afraid to play, I like that about them too. They’re going to be very tricky opposition. They’ve now earned the respect that they are going to be given and they’ll be a tough prospect. They’ve nothing to lose when they come over to play us in the first game — (against) reigning champions and it is their inaugural season in the Heineken Cup. They’ll be licking their lips.”

So will he. Civvy Street can wait.

* Brian O’Driscoll was speaking at the launch of Ultimate Rugby App. Ultimate Rugby is a one stop shop for players and fans covering 3,000 Northern & Southern Hemisphere matches each season and available from iTunes or www.UltimateRugby.com now.