He might be 30 but they haven't got his number

INTERVIEW BRIAN O'DRISCOLL: JOHNNY WATTERSONmeets the Ireland skipper. Caps no longer measure success for him. A more complete player now, he mightn't break the line as much but he can still break a game

BRIAN O’DRISCOLL is being taken back seven years to a black tie banquet in the Berkeley Court Hotel. He was young, 23 years old. He was Ireland captain and anxious about speaking in public. He was already a recognisable face and in the thronging hotel foyer people couldn’t stop themselves from turning, talking, staring at him as he walked through, head down.

“Howya, Dricko. Howya, Dricko. Howya, Dricko . . .”

When he finally made his captain’s speech and emerged some hours later, it was 11.30pm and his day, which had started at breakfast, was almost over. Contracted to do a newspaper column, the arrangement was to meet upstairs where the Ireland team had a floor and some rooms. You remind him that you sat in one of the common rooms waiting for him to arrive to read the final draft.

You tell him the door opened and he walked in. Did he have his hair dyed blond then? Yes. Maybe. Probably. The Ireland captain walked through with two green bottles of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, a long plume of smoke drifting off into the hotel corridor.

You tell him he was callow and trusting to have been so relaxed or lax in an environment where the optics of a fag and beers could have been misconstrued. You ask him does he recognise that strutting young skipper with the dyed hair, has he changed much?

“Yep,” he fires back, snapping his lips closed. “I trust who I trust,” he adds enigmatically.

His eyes narrow and his mouth turns down at the corners into a smile. Brown leather jacket, plain T-shirt, he’s dressed like he stole an idea from the book of how to look inconspicuous. The Ireland captain understands there is a poignancy to this week. He turns 30 on Wednesday. Still a young man, but also a time to pause.

Yep? Yep what? “Yep. I have definitely changed. Massively,” he says. “I’ve seen guys that dye their hair now. In five years time they’ll be a bit embarrassed by what they’ve done. But I don’t go ‘what an idiot’. Because I know where they are at. I know they might want to rebel a little bit as I did. I remember people telling me to cut my hair. That wasn’t the way to get through to me. It almost encouraged me more.

“I’ve learned a lot from the mistakes I’ve made. Not just from the rugby point of view but in the social scene as well. I can’t go into specifics because I’d upset certain people. As a 29-year-old, still, I can look back and say I was immature to do things and it was naivety that made me do them.

“But there’s very little I’d have changed. You need to learn. You make your mistakes and then go: ‘Arghhh!’ There were a few of those all right.

“But I don’t think I’ve been disrespectful. There have been plenty of times on a night out that there might have been a situation where I’ve had 10 photographs taken. I just have had enough. I say no to an 11th. They’re the situations I don’t apologise for. It’s a night out. I’ve stopped trying to please everyone a long time ago.”

On the pitch, O’Driscoll hasn’t stopped pleasing, although perhaps in a more nuanced way. There are less bells and whistles but his contribution is still immeasurable and still match-shaping. Last season was a quiet one. He refuses to carry the “plagued with injury” card but he struggled to get healthy and along with fitful form, moved from being the best centre in the world to the polemical wing of rugby commentary suggesting a terminal decline.

An aspect of his career that has never changed is that opinion of him in Ireland has sometimes polarised, while abroad his reputation has always soared.

There is an irony now that Michael Cheika will come under pressure if Leinster bomb out of the Heineken Cup. The principal reason the province held on to the most influential player of his generation, when he was seeking a lifestyle change, a new stimulus for his game was the Australian’s redecoration of the Leinster mindset. Cheika’s fresh view combined with a measured laissez faire attitude towards his best player’s threats to leave actually convinced O’Driscoll to stay.

“Yeah, I really did seriously think about France,” he says. “I balanced everything. Rugby would have been a huge component but not the only one.

“When Michael Cheika came in I said I’d give him that year. There were two clubs specifically interested. It wasn’t about a Dutch auction. I absolutely wanted to weigh up what their ambitions were, what their set-ups were like. We never spoke money. They never wanted to be used as a bargaining tool with the Union . . . you know, they offered so much, what was the union offering?

“I liked both places (in France) but it gave me renewed confidence when Cheiks came in. He knew that I had gone off and spoken with other clubs.

“He encouraged it. I mean I was straight up with him. I said this was a trial year, see how it goes and if things work out then, great. He was a smart enough guy to realise that in trying to nail someone down they’d rebel. I was in the position at the time that if I wanted to move on I was going to whether he wanted to stop me or not.”

O’Driscoll has not always been so definite, so single-minded. Moving from Blackrock College to UCD he wasn’t at all sure if he wanted to be a professional rugby player. He was on a rugby scholarship but really killing time in the hope of some sort of career epiphany. When the first contract from Leinster was nudged across the desk it was accepted with a nervous hand. He fretted.

He wondered should he put rugby aside and study something else. Anxious, he felt there was an uncertainty about where it was all going to lead him. But he signed. A couple of weeks later he was asked to tour Australia with Ireland, was handed a green shirt and hadn’t yet played for Leinster.

“Funnily, I’m kind of semi-proud of that in a weird kind of way. I’d say it’s kind of unique” he says. “I think I was still a UCD player. It happened so fast. I did sort of think, ‘Phew look at me: I’m only a kid and I’m playing with the big boys’.”

Between then and now the captain’s record has been lifted from Keith Wood’s pocket, the Irish try record annexed from Denis Hickie. The years have turned but a more measured O’Driscoll remains potent.

He’s a different player, with different motivations. He maintains the competitive heartbeat of the kid with the highlights in his hair, but almost all other aspects of his game have evolved, including his needs and the juices that drive him on.

“I don’t care to be the best in the world anymore,” he says. “What I care to be is a real quality player. That’s life. I’m a changed player.

“I don’t think I had the spatial awareness back then, the where to attack, the know-how in games, the way to defend, times to pressure. I’m a very different player and whether I’m better or worse, well, that’s people’s opinion. I mightn’t break the line as many times as I did in the past but I feel I still have the capabilities to break a game.

“The thing about rugby is that confidence is bordering on arrogance. Arrogance is perceived as a nasty word. You can be arrogant on a pitch with your talent provided your personality doesn’t show it. At times I can be arrogant on a pitch in the way I play. That’s not about rubbing people’s faces in it. No, I would not like to be perceived as a dick on the pitch. And plenty of people are.”

He is opinionated but he doesn’t strike out without measuring consequences because that could make his life harder and complicate his job as Ireland captain. That diplomatic position acts as a muzzle.

But the social constraints imposed by captaincy he gladly accepts, the responsibility he deeply respects.

“There is a huge amount I hide and won’t share with the public,” he says. “I’m not solely speaking for myself. I’m speaking for the team. ”

He is particularly scathing about the vacuity of celebrity culture, although his broad range of interests occasionally makes him part of it.

He sometimes feels he can’t win, “that his words will come back to bite”, but he has become philosophical about those things that are out of his control; the people who follow him around supermarkets, or sift through his rubbish or throw tampons into his shopping trolley will continue to do so. Professional rugby’s first celebrity doesn’t sweat the small stuff.

“I’m not complaining but I talk about being a private person and go to three events a year, which I’m pictured at,” he says. “The remark then is ‘oh, we’re not being so private now, are we?’ I’m not going to be a hermit. I’m at an event and I pose for a picture but I’m not going to pose going into a nightclub or into a bar. That’s none of their business.

“. . . My girlfriend (actress Amy Huberman) is in a new film at the moment and some snappers arrived out in Nass to outside the house where they were filming, waiting for her to come out and pose for them. There’s no way she’s going to come out. I’m on a similar buzz to that. There’s a time and place to adhere to what people need and people want. The rest of the time, that’s my time.

“I had a rant recently to Rugby World magazine. A bigger rant than I meant to have about being cynical about journalism. I said I’m wary of certain things. I don’t trust a huge amount of what’s written about anyone because I know so many lies are written about me, about Amy, about the lads.”

The spear tackle in New Zealand was depressing. With a Lions tour looming he modestly prefers to think people will remember him for opening the Australian defence in his first 2001 tour than the car crash of four years later with Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu.

“I was shouting to Jonny (Wilkinson) ‘Give us it, give us it’,” he says. “There might have been a missed tackle but then Australia didn’t concede too many.”

But just like stacking up Ireland appearances or pushing his Leinster starts skywards, there is a realism to his thinking now and a dwindling desire for tours, for caps for records. Another Lions romp is no longer a forum to prove himself to a world already smitten, but is seven weeks away from home, while statistics have lost their energy as a driving force.

Motivation has become very specific. O’Driscoll cannot see beyond the importance of each match and London Wasps are the only mark on the horizon.

Luke Fitzgerald and Rob Kearney, they can frolic around the paddock with equally focused minds but subconsciously, knowing they will get another chance to play quarter-final qualifiers. O’Driscoll is more blindingly conscious. Enjoying the now is one of the new discoveries of leaving his 20s behind.

“I’d love to be part of a winning Lions Test team,” he says. “But to be another Lion and not win, I’d take or leave. I don’t want to go on a seven-week tour. It’s about winning.

“I’ve 88 Irish caps, 115 or 120 Leinster caps. That’s not what I’m about. It’s not about picking up the numbers, one day being the most capped player and then seeing who’s going to beat you. Absolutely not. Not a goal of mine.

“In years gone by I was happy to play regularly and not fully understand the disappointment of losing. I have one Magners League to my name, a couple of Triple Crowns. Next number of years I really need to win to feel I’ve really fulfilled a lot of my potential.”

He says he’s had a good life, a great life. Last week he had an old friend from Boston over in his house for dinner. They struck up a conversation and his friend said “Jaysus, wouldn’t it be great to be back in school?” O’Driscoll stopped him. He said he had to disagree. He told him everything that has happened to him since he left school has given him a “blessed life”, what with the countries, the people, the money, the games, the global network that he can switch into if he wants.

He also says he is no academic genius but that he is street smart. He suggests there is some laddishness left in him but of a different order.

No more fags or peroxide. His mentor in UCD, John McClean, who as Leinster Schools coach did him the favour of moving him from outhalf into the centre, agrees that O’Driscoll is undoubtedly the best player to have ever come through the gates.

“I saw Kyle but he was finished. Mike Gibson I always rated,” says McClean. “Brian, defensively, does more than Gibson ever did. He just doesn’t spare himself. That’s the thing people miss out on.”

McClean also suggests that his graduate is also an acutely aware individual. “Brian has always realised that people want him to do things because he is a good rugby player and when he stops becoming a good player, they won’t want him to do things.”

Exactly, snaps O’Driscoll.

“In 10 years time after I’m finished playing, ask a 10-year-old who Brian O’Driscoll is. They won’t have a clue,” he says, the corner of his mouth once again turning down into a grin.

“I’ll be fish and chip paper.”

Brian O'Driscoll on ...

. . . the Lions . . .

“I’m hungry to be a Lion again. But to be another Lion and not going to win the Test, I’d take or leave.”

. . . celebrity . . .

“There’s a time and a place to adhere to what people need and want. The rest of the time, that’s my time.”

. . . winning . . .

“I’ve one Magners League to my name and a few Triple crowns. For the next number of years I need to win something to feel as though I’ve really fulfilled my potential.”

. . . ambition . . .

“I’ve got 88 Irish caps. I don’t know how many I’ve got for Leinster. It’s not about being the most capped player. Absolutely not. It’s about feeling bout for success.”

. . . France . . .

“I was straight up with him (Michael Cheika). I said this is a trial year, see how it goes and if things work out well for us great.”

. . . arrogance . . .

“I think I can be arrogant on the pitch in the way I play . . . that’s not rubbing people’s faces in it . . . I would not like to be perceived as a dick on the pitch. And plenty of people are.”