Brian O’Driscoll interview: ‘It’s normal to feel loss and a little envy towards those still playing’

The former Ireland and Leinster captain has made a documentary about retired sportsmen and mental health, a subject he knows plenty about

REFLECTIONS: Brian O'Driscoll says: "I don’t know if I could ever say I’d been depressed. That’s for a doctor to describe but it’s also why I saw the doctor before I retired."
Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

THERE are moments we don’t see, away from the din and dazzle of a fevered crowd, where a different truth emerges for a famous sportsman in retirement. On an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, at a low-key Chiswick Rugby Club, Brian O’Driscoll tells me about some of them. They range from visiting a psychiatrist to help prepare for life without rugby to the distressing days when he worried about the onset of dementia after all the big hits he had absorbed.

O’Driscoll was one of the world’s greatest rugby players for 14 glorious years. From the sublime hat-trick he scored against France in 2000 to secure Ireland’s first victory in Paris in 28 years, his brilliance and courage lit up European rugby. He played his final Test in 2014, again in Paris, when he helped seal an Irish grand slam. It was a fitting finale to a career that saw him win 141 caps, 133 for Ireland and eight for the Lions.