O'Driscoll ready to 'empty the tanks' for final Six Nations

Brian O'Driscoll is fired up and ready to go for this weekend's RBS Six Nations opener against Scotland at the Aviva Stadium.

Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt has been handed a clean bill of health as he prepares his side for Sunday's Six Nations opener against Scotland.

All 34 members of the Irish squad are taking part in training this afternoon after the likes of Peter O'Mahony, Gordan D'Arcy, Rob Kearney and Eoin Reddan were able to shake-off the injuries that sidelined them during last week's camp.

Jonathan Sexton is also fully fit, despite suffering a head wound while on club duty last weekend.

Team manager Mick Kearney has revealed that Tommy Bowe and Donnacha Ryan are both making good progress from their recent injury lay-offs.

They are now hoping to be involved for their provinces in the next two rounds of the Rabo Pro 12 in an effort to be available for Ireland's third game against England, although Bowe is still not certain to play this Friday against the Ospreys.

O'Driscoll has been asked to assess the strength of this current Scotland squad.

The former captain has been quite low key over the last few months in the Rabo Direct Pro 12 and the Heineken Cup for Leinster but insists he's ready to "empty the tanks" in his final Six Nations.

With all the hope from Leinster and Ireland fans that he might go for a year longer, he re-iterated the point he will be retiring at the end of the season.

Brian said, "I feel good, I got a week's training under my belt last week, I did everything that everyone else did, I got a good weekend's rest and raring to go now."

These days life seems pretty easy going for O'Driscoll compared to maybe seven years ago when he was captain. He would have always had to go to the Six Nations launches in London and all of the pre-match and post-match press conferences.

Fast forward and he no longer has to do that and Brian admits he is happy he is no longer under those pressures.

"It's probably a little bit less stressful, I think it's always easier to be a leader when you don't have the captain's armband as opposed to when you do have it."

"When you aren't captain there is an extra onus on you to be seen to be helping and sharing a workload."

"Now that I'm not the captain, I would always try to give Paulie (Paul O'Connell) a dig-out wherever I can and just take a little bit of the stress off him being the only voice."

"I don't miss the day over in London for sure, I did plenty of them but it's great to come in looking forward to such a great competition and the feeling when I was driving in the gates that it's game week this week, I still get just as much of a buzz out of it now."

Back in November when Ireland performed dreadfully against Australia, Joe Schmidt's men came out a week later and showed what they could do against the All Blacks.

Granted everyone, including the players, left the Aviva Stadium broken-hearted, it was a performance a lot of us haven't seen from Ireland in some time.

Last year's Six Nations under Declan Kidney left a lot of people questioning a consistency in performances.

Fans wouldn't disagree that if Joe Schmidt could inspire that same type of performance that saw Ireland three tries to nil up against the All Blacks for this championship, we could be looking at another St Patrick's weekend Grand Slam decider in Paris.

O'Driscoll says they must not focus too much on the emotion a team brings to a game, like what was seen in November.

He said: "We know what our capabilities are and it's not just about relying on the emotion but if we can have our detail and strategy as second nature, then you can go and work on how you play your game and the physicality you bring."

Ireland have three home games this year with Scotland, Wales and Italy visiting Dublin.

Brian says that it is important the squad don't take their eye off the ball this week and start thinking about getting one over on the Champions Wales.

Their last visit to the Aviva Stadium, saw them essentially end Ireland's campaign in the first match.

O'Driscoll says Scotland will arrive with a pretty similar aim.

"I think the last four years we have shared the spoils with them, we would have a healthy respect for them but you don't get results out of expectation, you still have to deliver." Brian said.

There is no doubt that when the Scotland match is all finished off, the headlines you will be reading will be about Brian getting one over on Warren Gatland.

It was a move that shocked the nation when the Welsh and Lions coach dropped O'Driscoll for the last test against Australia in the summer of 2013.

Brian told today's media in Carton House that he pays no attention to the headlines.

"What happened happened, I don't have any ill feeling for Warren, when it was raw afterwards the emotions are a bit different to how they are now."

"Time does heal all wounds, what I will look towards is trying to be involved in a team that and beat his team but that's next week, we have a game to focus on winning this week."