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

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 Six Nations crown. It was a fitting finale to a career which saw him win 141 caps, 133 for Ireland and eight for the Lions.

“My initial feeling when I left rugby was I couldn’t get out quick enough because I knew I was massively on the wane,” O’Driscoll says now. “But winning the Six Nations was a fairytale ending. I was so relieved, getting out unscathed, but also that my reputation was intact. People were looking for more and the upside are the parties and the cool stuff. You come round to the next season and you think: ‘Well, playing international rugby is better than that.’ That’s when retirement sinks in.”

My initial feeling when I left rugby was I couldn’t get out quick enough because I knew I was massively on the wane. But winning the Six Nations was a fairytale ending

The 43-year-old has just produced and fronted a fine documentary about mental health and retired sportsmen – from AP McCoy to Gareth Southgate – which includes some of his own experiences. It offers an intriguing contrast of characters but I am also struck by the subjects that are not in the film. These include that pre-emptive visit to a psychiatrist, his stark acknowledgement of the brain damage rugby can cause and the loss of his close friend, Barry Twomey, who took his own life in 2008.

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O’Driscoll saw a psychiatrist “three or four times” while still playing, and he nods when I ask if those visits helped him accept the little death sportsmen feel in retirement. “Yes. It prepped me for feeling lousy, for accepting those moments where you really wish you were out there. It made me understand that [Ireland and Leinster] are going to be successful but you don’t have any way of getting that feeling back. During your career that glass is always half full. Even when you’re in the doldrums you can get back to that place; but not when you’re retired. It helped knowing it’s normal to feel loss and a little envy towards those still playing.”

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O’Driscoll is so balanced that when I ask if he has suffered from depression since retiring, he thinks carefully. “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. I wanted to pre-empt the downside. Like everybody I get low sometimes but my emotional state usually never fluctuates greatly whether dealing with euphoria or disappointments. That’s my make-up. Other people are totally different. But there were definitely times you’re just plodding along. The lack of purpose was huge.”

He now runs a production company, 3 Rock, which made his latest documentary with BT Sport, but O’Driscoll smiles. “If you’re comparing highs, what’s going to match [Test rugby]? You try to convince yourself you’ve done a really good Sunday show on BT with Craig [Doyle] and Lawrence [Dallaglio]. You think: ‘That was great!’ But, really, that’s not rolling your sleeves up and beating England or winning a grand slam or coming back against Northampton in the Heineken Cup final in 2011. It doesn’t come close.”

The documentary features a fascinating interview with AP McCoy, who shows again why he was once the most compelling figure in British and Irish sport, and the jockey admits to even missing the “agony” and “torture” of jump racing. McCoy also suggests, with a dry smile, he would rather be dead than see anyone break his record of 20 successive champion jockey titles. “I don’t know if it’s better or worse for him having achieved what he did,” O’Driscoll says of McCoy. “Does all his success make its ending even more painful? AP is really the extreme version of a great sportsman in retirement. He was trying to suggest our commonalities and I was: ‘Whoa, hang on AP. You and I are different beasts.”

O’Driscoll also allows Anthony Ogogo, an Olympic medal-winning boxer whose professional career was cut devastatingly short by an eye injury, to explain how he ended up crying on his kitchen floor, wanting to die. It was only after he lost his best friend to cancer in 2020 that Ogogo’s perspective changed – even if his life now lacks the dramatic highs and lows of boxing.

More than half of professional sportsmen and women in retirement have mental health concerns and yet, as O’Driscoll says, only 40 per cent of those affected will seek help. He stresses that finding a way to talk about depression and pain usually helps and so it seems strange he did not speak about the death of Twomey, who took his own life 14 years ago.

“I didn’t initially talk about Barry because I was mindful of his family. But when we made the film I talked a little about him to Jonny Bairstow [the cricketer who was eight years old when his father took his own life] but that was left on the cutting room floor. We were both 29 [when Twomey died]. If I had any inkling I would have spoken to him because we had a friendship where I could have said anything. But he never showed any level of depression or anxiety, and that’s why to this day it’s a crazy shock.”

When was the last time he saw Barry? “It was a Saturday morning and he was working for a radio station. He asked me if I’d do an interview about Munster playing [Leicester] in the Heineken Cup final. I was like: ‘You’re kidding, Barry. I need to big up Munster before they win the Heineken Cup?’ Retrospectively I’m relieved I did because, within 48 hours, he was gone.

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“We all know people we worry about [in terms of their mental health] but Barry was never on that radar. Even his fiancee had no idea. Out of all the people who might feel forced to take their own life he was at the very bottom of my list. So that’s why it’s so important to ask people, even if they appear great: ‘Are you genuinely good?’ Sometimes that second question is the hook for them to go: ‘Well, now that you’re asking …’”

O’Driscoll is acutely aware that, even if mental health is the focus here, darker troubles cloud rugby’s future. His concern about the damage rugby can cause is evident when he says: “I was nervous initially after I retired. When I thought I was dropping my keys and bumping into doors I started to convince myself there might be a problem. I went and got a load of testing done and everything is fine.”

I was nervous initially after I retired. When I thought I was dropping my keys and bumping into doors I started to convince myself there might be a problem

Yet Ryan Jones, the former Wales captain against whom O’Driscoll played so often and also toured with for the Lions in 2005, is the latest rugby player to fear that his “world is falling apart.” Jones was recently diagnosed with early onset dementia at the age of 41. “I feel huge sadness for him, feeling those effects at such a young age,” O’Driscoll says when I ask if Jones’ tragic plight has made him feel fresh alarm about his own future. “But, if you dwell on it, it’ll drive you mad.

“I know what the risks might have been but would I change a whole lot about my career? No. I had a great time. Was there an occasion when I felt like I had a concussion and I’ve tried to get myself off the field? I can’t see it. It’s not the way you’re made. That’s why decisions have to be taken away from players because you don’t think rationally. You just want to be in the fight. But I don’t sit at home in a dark room and think about what I’m going to be like at 60. It’s not serving any purpose.”

But surely something needs to be done to reduce the perils of rugby? “They’re trying their best, but I don’t know how you change things other than trying to reduce tackle heights and stop head collisions. You’re going to have concussive episodes for the next 150 years of the game if it survives that long. That’s the nature of contact sport. If my son or daughter want to play professional rugby I wouldn’t stop them just because of the danger. The upside is so significant you need to understand the risk and reward.”

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O’Driscoll stresses that rugby has become even more brutal in the eight years since he retired. “It’s significant. But that’s professionalism coming up to 30 years and, with financial incentives, comes competition. It’s no shock the game has become more physical.”

It almost sounds as if nothing can be done to save professional rugby from itself? “Other than reinventing the game, which is a collision-winning sport,” O’Driscoll says. “It you take that away it’s not rugby. The big onus on the stakeholders is to try and reduce the numbers of concussions and head collisions. But you’re going to have them, and that’s the reality of it.”

Fundamental questions about rugby’s future need to be addressed but O’Driscoll loves the game so much that, on a sunny, autumnal afternoon, we are soon get swept away by international results from the summer – not least Ireland’s first series victory in New Zealand. “We’ve beaten them five out of the last eight games and I was in Chicago when we beat them the first time [in 2016]. For me it was bittersweet. You see them celebrating afterwards and you go: ‘I was so close to that in 2013. I should have had that moment.’ It’s human instinct and I’d be bullshitting if I shied away from that. We only beat them for the third time last November and I enjoyed it with my son. It was his first game as he’s seven. He said: ‘This is great! Dad, did you ever beat the All Blacks?’ Next question!”

O’Driscoll laughs before becoming more serious when I ask if New Zealand will resolve their predicament which reached its nadir last month when they lost at home to Argentina. “They’ve got a long way to go to get back that formidable aura of the All Blacks. They had three defeats on the bounce at home, which has never happened before, been unrecognisable in attack and defensively porous. I don’t think there’s a quick fix but I said six months ago they could have done a hell of a lot worse than making Joe Schmidt [under whom O’Driscoll played for Ireland] head coach. He would give them real structure but they’re not used to crises.”

Will New Zealand keep Ian Foster as their coach? “Hopefully,” O’Driscoll says before laughing again. “That will come back to haunt me now!”

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O’Driscoll believes that France and Ireland are the two best teams in the world. “I do, for now, but so much can change, particularly in a country like Ireland. If you lose one or two big-name players it would have a significant impact on morale as well as the belief you can actually get to that elusive semi-final or even the final and win it.”

Would he feel the same bittersweet emotions if Ireland were to win the World Cup? “It would be there, but I’m far enough removed now. If it was my first World Cup, oh my God. But I’ll have missed three by next year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still entitled to go: ‘Oh, those lucky feckers.’ But I’ll be able to enjoy it an awful lot more than I would have done after a year out of the game. It’s getting easier.” - Guardian

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