Wounded but not walking away

Lions Tour/Brian O'Driscoll interview: Brian O'Driscoll isn't for budging on his views about the double spear tackle that ended his Lions tour. Nor does he feel like some kind of freak show, being opportunistically pushed into the public glare as part of the Lions' spin-doctoring. The 26-year-old Ireland and Lions captain clearly still bears the biggest grudge of his rugby career.

As O'Driscoll spoke exclusively to Irish journalists in Wellington yesterday, in a boardroom off the business centre on the top flight of the Intercontinental Hotel, where the Lions are based, the panoramic view of the harbour, with the cloudless sky almost mirroring the brilliant blue of the sea, seemed surreally beautiful for one of the more sombre interviews one can imagine.

His tone was slightly more hushed than normal, and hardly varied throughout. He's brought himself to watch the incident again, if not the first Test in its entirety. He can occasionally manage that trademark smile with an ironic comment, though it's hollower than normal.

He's still bitter, undoubtedly as much with the disciplinary procedures as anything else, and particularly upset that his counterpart as captain and outside centre, Tana Umaga, has shown so little remorse or even regret since or, apart from one voice message apiece, has failed to contact him in person.

Recalling the incident is akin to recounting a car crash, and as much as any other emotion, like his father, mother and sisters who are out here, he is genuinely relieved while he's a broken rugby player, he's not a broken man.

"I don't see how you can see it in a positive light. I guess the only positive aspect I can take from it is that it was my shoulder and not my neck that I landed on. It was a strange situation in that I found it happening in slow motion and when I was up in the air I knew that I was in trouble coming down, so I just made sure that I got my head out of the way.

"In hindsight it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I mightn't have been here chatting to you. I'd be lying in a hospital bed. There is an element of it (relief), definitely; it could have been a lot worse. As much as you get angry that you're out of the tour, there is a big sense of relief that it wasn't more serious."

Yes, he had brought himself to view the video stills of the ruck 40 seconds into the Test series.

"I looked at it a few times. It was pretty cringey to look at. It's not nice to look at but you just have to deal with it now."

Nor has viewing it remotely dimmed his sense of outrage.

"I think it was certainly an illegal tackle and, like I said before, way beyond the rules, and I'm pretty shocked that nothing has come of it, to be honest. I think the general public are much of that opinion as well, that it was a very lethal tackle.

"And I just met a guy down in the lobby, and he was absolutely shocked and disgusted at what a cowardly act it was. And if that's coming from a Kiwi, I can only imagine what the opinion back home is."

That justice wasn't seen to be done in his eyes is what grates.

"That's the thing. Everyone has been involved in tackles and situations that they've regretted, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you should get punished for them. I've been involved in situations where I've caught people high in tackles and I've been yellow-carded for it and you've got to hold your hand up at times. But the fact that nothing was done then and nothing was done afterwards, yeah, it certainly feels like a lack of justice."

Totting up the rough treatment meted out to him over the years, he'd be entitled to feel targeted, but doesn't.

"I'm sure it does happen, but that's what the referees and the laws are there for, to look after you in that way. I think that's when in a situation like this that it fails, you lose a little bit of faith in that. But it wouldn't stop me from playing the game the style that I do play, or it doesn't make me a cynic about the game.

"I'll still go on and love it and play it as I would have five or six years ago when I started off."

He had built up a particularly good relationship with Umaga, in part through their work on the "Adidas Last Man Standing" ads, and when asked if this made it hurt a little bit more, he said: "He rang on Sunday and left a message to try and get in contact with me and I rang him back. I didn't get through to him. I left a message on his answering phone yesterday and I haven't heard from him since.

"Yeah, I think the aspect that upset me, sure he was involved in it, but also there's unwritten rules as well. If somebody gets stretchered off, particularly in the first minute of the game, the captain of the opposition should come over, particularly when it's the opposition captain that's been injured or someone in your own position. You just expect someone to come over, you don't even have to say anything, just give an acknowledgement.

"That certainly did disappointment me, because I felt that we had a good rapport. But as well, with him not coming over, I felt there was an element of guilt in it. I thought that spoke volumes."

He was asked to recount the moments and first few hours after sustaining the injury.

"We went to the medical room and they tried to relocate it, and it took 25 minutes to do that. It was pretty sore. It took a while for the morphine to come, someone else in the ground needed it. Then they got it into place and the pain subsided a little bit - well, very much so because it was real agony.

"I went off to hospital for an X-ray to see if anything was broken, but there wasn't. I just came back from the hospital that night. It wasn't that late. I think I was back around 10.30ish and I had to wait for the boys to come back from the function before we had a meeting."

O'Driscoll smiled when revealing Richard Hill later chided him that it wasn't nice to hear the captain's screams while he was in the same hospital getting treatment on his damaged knee ligaments.

"I wasn't really aware of the result, that was secondary at the time. I could kind of hear shouts and roars, and I thought I heard 11-0 at half-time. I thought I heard 21-3 but I wasn't sure if it was finished or what the final score was. Then I didn't know if it was the full-time score."

He hasn't been able to watch the game since on video.

"No. I've watched parts of it but I haven't sat down and watched all of it. I don't really think I'd want to watch the whole lot of it. It's not nice looking back on a game that you should have been involved in and missed out on the whole lot of."

With a little persuasion from team-mates he has decided to stay on.

"To be honest it wasn't that difficult a decision. I didn't really think about it too hard. I talked to a couple of the boys as well and they felt it would be good if I could stay on, and that was my decision made then. I wouldn't have liked to stay at home if I thought I might have had something to add to the tour, a relevant comment or some sort of inspiration . . . that's why I decided I think I'll hang on.

"It was never going to be a case of jumping ship. I still think we have every chance of winning the series. So I wanted to hang around and be part of it. (Then) I can still get one hand on the trophy yet," he said, with an ironic, self-deprecatingly smile.

"I'll still go to meetings. Obviously training sessions are training sessions, but if I feel there's a relevant point to be made, I'll make it, and just try and chat to everyone and keep everyone geed up. Just remain as positive as possible, because there's still plenty to play and sometimes you forget that. I'm coming from a good point of view; I'm on the exterior looking in so I think I'll have a good balance of things."

O'Driscoll agrees that his replacement as captain, Gareth Thomas, is "exactly what they need. He speaks his mind, and the guys really respect him. I think he's grown into the tour in a big way. People didn't know what they got with him before the tour, but they certainly do now. He's very well spoken too. He mightn't be the most eloquent of speakers, but it comes from the heart and it hits a nerve."

O'Driscoll's belief the Lions can turn around the series is not based on blind faith.

"I think we still have one really big performance left in us, hopefully two, and we'll definitely play this Saturday, we'll win some set-piece ball and it'll be a one-score game this weekend. I just think we're going to really want it because of the disappointment of last weekend, and the fact we haven't really played brilliant rugby at any stage. I think we have a really big performance in us, everyone coming together. There's so much talent in the squad that it's about time everyone clicked together and we got a performance we've been waiting for. There's definitely one in us."

He would have had to delay the operation for a week and a half to let the swelling go down in any case, and has shelved plans to stay on for a few days by returning home with most of the squad on July 10th and having surgery on July 12th or 13th. The "vague" recovery period is estimated at three to six months.

"It depends on how it goes too. It depends on your own body, how you react to it and how much work you put in. There's no specifics on it. I know that it'll probably be immoveable for about six weeks. Other than that it's up to myself, with rehab and how the operation goes.

"It comes out of the sling after about six weeks, then working at the strength, getting the range through it again. A lot of it can be your confidence in the surgeon. It might still be uncomfortable at times, but you're not going to do any more damage, so it's that confidence . . . to then go out and push it. When you get the nod from them that gives you a big confidence booster."

A best-case scenario therefore could be Ireland's autumn Tests, and ironically the first of those is against the All Blacks. A good target to set for you then, Brian?

"There's a carrot there," he said, smiling again.

He's also come to terms with it in the fashion of any modern-day rugby player, citing major injuries to his team-mates and friends as the inevitable by-product of playing this high-impact sport.

"I've no dark thoughts. It's just an injury. I will recover from it and get on and be back to normal. It's part and parcel of a rugby player's career. You expect to have a serious injury in your career. I think I've done well to get to 26. I think I've a lot more rugby in me. There will be difficult moments in the next while, but these things tend to test you and you come out stronger at the other end."

To claim the Lions media department is using him to spin a web in order to mask the awfulness of their first-Test efforts O'Driscoll counters that the All Blacks are trying to "sidetrack from the incident with their own 360-degree turn . . . by concentrating on the performance only".

So, in conclusion then, how does he feel three days after his tour was cruelly ended?

"It's been hard going. I was very upbeat after the initial, real disappointment, but low when you see the boys involved in training. Saturday will be tough realising you're playing no more Tests. But it happens to players. Look at Jonny (Wilkinson), and my mates like Denis (Hickie), who had a broken cheekbone and then missed the World Cup quarter-final. Shaggy (Shane Horgan), gone for eight or nine months. Rog (Ronan O'Gara) with his knee.

"You just have to get on with it. It's a test of your character. It gives you a reality check that the game can be pretty fickle at times. It reminds you to be thankful for what you have had before the injury and it gives you a chance to enjoy the highs a little bit more because there are lows to the game.

"I don't think it's my lowest point. It's a huge setback. I don't want to quantify it. The World Cup in 1999, I haven't thought 'that's number one and two'. It's just general disappointment, it was going to be a huge occasion, a huge honour to be captain of the Lions. To only play for 45 seconds takes away from that, a case of a missed opportunity."

No, he wasn't thinking of four years from now.

"That's a long time away."