Injustice to inspire enormous response

Alastair Campbell is astonished that the tackle on Brian O'Driscoll is going unpunished

Brian O'Driscoll was the only top rugby player I knew before being signed up by Clive Woodward to work with the British and Irish Lions.

I interviewed him a couple of years ago for a newspaper series I was doing at the time on great sportsmen and sportswomen. We met on the terrace of an upmarket pub on the outskirts of Dublin. His easy manner, his interest in lots of things besides rugby, his intelligence and his humour made him a very easy interviewee. I was also struck by how well he dealt with the passers-by who stopped to talk or get an autograph.

So when I signed up with Woodward, I was pleased to hear Brian would be the tour captain, because we would obviously be working closely together on the media side of things. Brian is a good communicator, and you need a few of those with all the media space being used up for this tour, both at home and, on a scale you would find hard to imagine, even more so here in New Zealand.

He is all the better as a communicator for sometimes being understated. In team talks, Clive will ask him if he has anything to say. Sometimes Brian says no, it's all been said. So when he speaks, it's usually because he has something to say.

His speech on the day the side for the match against Southland was announced - alongside the public statement that none of the players involved would be in the first Test side - was important. He spoke with real feeling about the Lions as a squad, emphasising the insight that if we won the Test series, every player on tour was a winning Lion, and if we lost, every player was a losing Lion. He helped keep the squad gelled at a difficult moment.

His pre-match team talk before the first Test was more passionate, more stirring, more laced with strong, dressing-room language. Minutes later, he was out of the tour.

I didn't see what happened at the time, as the incident took place on the other side of the pitch. It was obviously serious though, and as he was removed from the field, you could sense a real deflation among the Lions fans around us.

A tough challenge had become a whole lot tougher. I don't think anyone is pretending that Brian's staying on the field would on its own have prevented the poor Lions performance. But it was an enormous loss to sustain.

Of the players, only Gareth Thomas seemed to have clocked what had happened. He later told us that as the ball left the ruck in which Brian sustained his injury, the touch judge came on the field, yelling, "Leave him alone, leave him alone, the ball has gone." After Brian was driven into the ground, Gareth three times stormed at the touch judge asking why he was doing nothing. The Australian official - who is referee for the second Test on Saturday - didn't even look at him.

Once the match was over, Clive, Lions lawyer Richard Smith and I went to the Sky TV truck to look at as many angles as we could find. The evidence of a spear tackle was pretty clear. We assumed the citing commissioner would cite the two players involved. In any event, Clive instructed Richard formally to make a complaint and draw the citing commissioner's attention specifically to the clips we had seen. At the very least the incident merited full investigation. But we were convinced this was a red-card offence that should be referred to a tribunal. Under the current system, the decision on whether to cite must be made within 12 hours of the end of the match. Our claim was dismissed around 3am, the decision relayed to us by an Irish journalist.

Subsequent efforts by Richard Smith to speak to the South African citing commissioner were met with a rebuff. We were told by NZ officials he did not need to give his reasons.

Given the poor performance on the field, the mood in the team room on Saturday night was low enough even before Brian came in after his return from hospital, where it had taken almost half an hour to relocate his shoulder.

He was angry but, amazingly, not bitter. He was in no doubt he was the victim of an illegal tackle and he was shocked to learn Tana Umaga, the New Zealand captain, was involved. He assumed it was feelings of guilt that explained why Umaga did not observe the conventional courtesy of a captain bidding farewell to a player departing the field of play.

Brian's parents and other family members were around, and were invited into the team room. They too, though upset, revealed an impressive lack of bitterness. The players, when shown the videotape, were genuinely shocked at the nature of the tackle, and the fact Umaga was involved. But then the videotape showed a similar tackle by him on Josh Lewsey, as well as a trip on the same player.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about it since. Some, like Brian, are convinced he was speared. Many in the media totally accept that, not least because Brian is the least likely player they know to exaggerate or attack another player verbally for the sake of it.

There is, astonishingly to many, no right of appeal, no further action to be taken. So Danny Grewcock is out for two months for an alleged bite - denied - which didn't even break skin, whilst a clearly controversial tackle that might have easily broken the Lions captain's neck, does not merit investigation let alone punishment.

Brian is staying on tour. His influence can still be powerful. At the press conference at which we introduced Gareth Thomas as replacement captain, he said as far as he was concerned Brian was still tour captain.

His staying is also good news for me because, with Brian unable to play, he will have lots of time to help us out with media. But what a waste of talent. And what a sense of injustice there is in the Lions camp, one which will hopefully inspire the second Test side to rise to the enormous challenge of winning the game on Saturday.