Farewell party but not for BOD

The suspicion for a long time had been that this was to be Brian O’Driscoll’s swansong yet there he was on Saturday night waxing lyrical about those others set to depart while he himself looks ahead to a fourth Lions tour and one more year of battle.

The great survivor.

It was almost four years to the day since he stood on the Murrayfield pitch in Edinburgh and spoke about what it meant to him to finally win a Heineken Cup medal with a Leinster team that was always more than just a club to him.