Not just a shoulder ripping yarn

A man came up to Brian O'Driscoll in the street during the week: "I'm a Gaelic football man myself but jaysus, I love the hard, fair way you play the game and I'm looking forward to seing you back."

The recuperating Lions, Ireland and Leinster captain appreciates little reminders like that, that people haven't forgotten he used to be, and will be again soon, a rugby player. You sense, too, he can't wait for the day when we will only be talking about his playing exploits.

It's been a long, hard road back since Saturday June 25th, the day he describes as the worst in his life. Afforded only 10 days' holidays after the Lions tour, he had another week due to him in September, and only then - about three weeks ago - does he reckon the real Brian O'Driscoll resurfaced.

"When I came back from that I said: 'Right, here are four of the hardest weeks' work I'll ever do. And I've done three of them now, and I feel great. My fitness has really come on. I'm just looking after myself, I've started to tone up again a little bit and the Ronan O'Gara spare tyre is nearly gone."

Yes, the chirpiness is back too, and the hunger for the game. There's still pain there in that reconstructed right shoulder. Some days he wakes up so sore and stiff he can't do much. He has to accept there will be days like that. And while he doesn't rule out a December comeback, ideally for Leinster's games against Bourgoin, there's no way he's going to risk a setback and another five-month rehabilitation.

"I couldn't do another five months of that, that would just break you. To have to get another job done on the same shoulder it would never be the same again, whereas there's the potential for it to be 95 per cent as strong as it was."

For the last week or so, however, there's been the launch of his book - A Year in the Centre - and one senses it's something he could do without. Yesterday, there was his morning training, prior to rerouting this lunchtime interview to his house, as he had some business to discuss with a designer and an electrician at the new home he is having built nearby, picking up a couple of sandwiches en route.

Then he was racing off from his driveway in his black Lexus for another interview, and last night there was an appearance on the Late Late Show. But after this, he vows, there'll be no more interviews until we see him on a rugby pitch.

The painstaking and painful recounting of his last minute on a rugby pitch on that fateful June night in Christchurch, and it's fallout, make for compelling reading in a car-crash sort of way in what is, all in all, a relatively good and accessible read.

A Year in the Centre could be more anecdotal, but it's a revealing insight into him without being a warts-and-all expose.

A rugby player's year-long diary is a new departure, and either way O'Driscoll was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. If you're going to be of interest, you're invariably going to have to upset people, and if you don't, it's probably going to be boring.

"I think I got a reasonably good balance, because the only people that I may have offended would have been for a reason - ie, I offended the woman who cut my jersey and I assure you that did happen," says O'Driscoll, in relation to the nurse who, incredibly, persistently asked him for the shirt she was cutting off as a memento for her kids.

The suggestion from New Zealand - where revisiting the episode has prompted predictable indignation and, in the context of the All Blacks' imminent visit, is probably counterproductive - is that the nurse may have been a figment of his imagination. It was, however, too unbelievable to be anything but true.

"Well, I didn't have any morphine in me at that bloody stage, and my cousin Gary (Ireland and Lions doctor Gary O'Driscoll) was there too. My dad said to me afterwards, 'If you had said yes to her at that moment I would have been adamant about not doing it.' And doctors always tell the truth.

"I went back to him afterwards and asked, 'Did that really happen?' It was just flabbergasting. I know the truth of it, and I'm not making anything up in that book. I have written it as it happened."

It also reads like an authentic diary, not rewritten with the benefit of hindsight.

"When people read it they expect a book to be somewhat interesting and I didn't want it to be this mundane, pain-in-the-hole-

to-get-through sort of book.

"I did look back and cringe a little as to what I had said, but I left it in, because that's how it was at that moment, and I wanted it to be as honest as possible. Y'know, shoot me for doing it, but that's what a diary is I think."

It certainly didn't pan out to be the golden year he, and his publishers, would have ideally wanted. That said, he makes the rather streetwise assertion that "for the publishers the tackle saved them in the end to a point. The book might have been a bit of a nonentity bar that, because we didn't feature in the Heineken in the end, because we didn't win the slam or the Triple Crown, and because we got beaten three-nil in the series. A year that promised so much delivered so little. It was a very disappointing year. But I'm the eternal optimist."

Another theme that prevails through the pages is the sheer intensity of being a Lions captain, and the knowledge of what was about to end it all for him made this more poignant. It was an all-consuming, eating, sleeping, breathing job, always planning and thinking ahead. Although he enjoyed it, it almost seemed lonely.

"It was intense, and the thing about me is that my playing comes naturally to me. Sure I work at it, and the process creates the end result, but that's easy for me, whereas my captaincy I always have to work at. I wasn't a natural-born leader. I had to grow into it, and that probably took the most energy from me, just thinking that over. Even things like speeches, I got quite nervous about Rotorua (the official Maori welcome at the start of the tour). That still makes me a bit nervous.

"It's something that doesn't come totally naturally to me. Some people are confident with that. I'm confident going out and playing rugby in front of how many people. That's just my make-up."

His family, the distinctive roles of his father-cum-adviser, Frank, his mother, Geraldine, and his sisters, Julie and Susan, as well as his girlfriend, Glenda, were the rock he could fall back on.

"It's something that I can always turn around to, will always support me, which is fantastic to have. It's invaluable. And always looking out for my best interest."

O'Driscoll is candid about his evaluation of Alastair Campbell as an eminently personable, likeable individual who simply came with too much baggage. And amid a prevailing sense he thought there was too much spin-doctoring, O'Driscoll observes of the "musical fanfare" and video presentation of the first Test selection: "Over the top. You can set yourself up for a fall with stuff like this."

Revealingly, he confirms lineout calls were changed on Thursday, June 16th, nine days before the Test, amid prevailing paranoia about New Zealand spies in the squad hotel. Furthermore, on Wednesday, June 22nd, he notes cryptically: "Still seems to be some debate about the lineout calls. I thought that was sorted last week."

A week ago O'Driscoll revealed Clive Woodward hadn't followed up his intention to contact him since the tour ended, since when Woodward rang two days ago.

"He thanked me for the text message I sent him when he joined Southampton and he apologised for not ringing me sooner, but Southampton had just taken up his time."

O'Driscoll would like his input into an in-depth analysis post-tour of last summer's events, though amazingly, nothing to that end has occurred yet.

"I would still like that. I think there's still room for that. My memories are still fresh enough and I think I would have a good view on how things need to be a bit different next time around."

He stands by much of Woodward's planning but maintains they should have trained more as an entire squad and that not playing the Test team en bloc more than once beforehand was a mistake.

Steve Walsh cops it sweet, so to speak, while closer to home, the admission his career has stagnated at Leinster, coupled with the highly publicised flirtation with Biarritz, won't have endeared him to Gary Ella, Declan Kidney and Gerry Murphy, and mightn't at first glance have endeared him to the new Leinster coaching staff.

"Yes and no. I've spoken to Michael (Cheika) and he knows my situation. He realises that when I made reference to not learning a huge amount in the last two years particularly, it had nothing to do with him and Knoxie. My skills didn't progress and I just didn't feel I'd stepped up another level as a player. And the amount of skill work I'm doing at the moment is great - passing and kicking, and developing new skills, all sorts of stuff. I'm really loving the variety of fitness work we're doing too."

Would he do it again? Unlikely.

"Not for a while. I certainly wouldn't do it next year. It's a big effort. Excuse the pun, but I'll shelve that for a while."

l A Year in the Centre (€23.99), published by Penguin, is in shops.