BOD hits back after BT Sport’s Lions tweet
It was a tweet promoting the interview between the Leinster and Ireland veteran and BT Sport’s Craig Doyle, which was aired last night, that caused the latest spike in interest. Or, rather, O’Driscoll’s own response on Twitter.
“Brian O’Driscoll on Lions omission”, was the teaser, to which O’Driscoll’s response was: “Thanks for that. One question in an interview & you put it in the headline. Typical … unbelievably annoying headline. So annoyed with it. Who cares any more.”
Doyle subsequently took to the social media platform himself to plead his innocence, blaming someone else for an errant headline and pointing out that he was a massive fan of the player.
That much was apparent in the piece.
Not so much an interview as an homage, Doyle lobbed powder puff questions at O’Driscoll — who will earn his 130th cap against Wales this Saturday — as they lounged in deck chairs and drank green tea beside an old VW Beetle camper van.
The first half of the piece was done with the player in what appeared to be the team hotel and it was here where he addressed the Gatland issue with a reply to an unheard question almost identical to one offered at his team media duties last week.
“The Welsh fixture, a lot is going to be made of it but, from my own personal point of view, wounds have healed from my own personal disappointment that I had back in June and July and I have absolutely no animosity towards Warren. He did what he did for the betterment of the team.
“You get over those things and move on.”
The pity of it was that it wasted the opportunity to delve deeper into a man who has for so long been the most thoughtful and articulate interviewee in Irish sport and there were tantalising signs of that last night.
O’Driscoll spoke briefly about his Six Nations highlights, the immediate aftermath to that agonising loss to the All Blacks last November and the manner in which rugby has changed since the beginning of his own career in the late 1990s.
The most tantalising insight came when he discussed his general fitness as the clock dwindles down on his career and, though he has talked before about retirement from the game being the “afterlife”, he was able to see the funny side here.
“It’s just general stiffness. It takes me quite a while to get going. I like to get out on the pitch before everyone else. Half-time these days is an absolute disaster. These 15-minute half-times are a nightmare. I just become a board.”
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