Brian O’Driscoll: Ireland have got to think about winning the World Cup

He’s kept himself in good nick and, at 44, Brian O’Driscoll looks like he could still throw on his kit and lace up his boots again. There’s a part of him that still misses it too, not least given the way this Ireland team is playing.

“I don’t know when that will go, I really don’t,” he admits of the envy. “It’s easier to miss it when it’s such a great thing to watch. ‘Wow, I think my game would work in that, to be a cog in that wheel.’ You think as though you could add value. But I don’t know how much more value I could add than Garry Ringrose does.”

Nor is that just another ‘Rock Boys Are We’ love-in. O’Driscoll has always known his retirement in 2014 was eased by Ringrose’s timely emergence.

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O’Driscoll was also a Joe Schmidt disciple, winning two more Heineken Cups, and a Challenge Cup/Pro12 double to add to the Grand Slam and Heineken Cup of 2009 in the last four bountiful years of his career.

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Yet he readily admits that Andy Farrell has taken the team to another level. “He’s brought a completely different stamp and style, first of all; a player-led environment where he’s got some very important key leaders. They’re playing heads-up rugby.”

Irish teams have always, he believes, had good rugby brains. It resonated with him that Lions coaches were struck by their intellect, players like Ronan O’Gara, Rory Best, Paul O’Connell and so on.

“But, not that we didn’t have phenomenal athletes before, we’ve got a generation of brilliant athletes now. Like all teams, we’ll peak and trough with that, but it does feel as though it’s a peak of quality at the moment.”

He observed the difference in the squad environment first hand following his first visit inside the camp for nine years on the Monday before the French game to talk about his BT documentary Shoulder to Shoulder.

But he’s never really had a coaching itch to scratch himself.

“The baseline is that it wouldn’t suit our family life. It wouldn’t suit Amy and her career, and the possibility of moving around, and a disjointed existence on cycles of two or three years, I don’t think that would be for us.”

Nor did he wanted his weekends defined by win/lose/draw. Besides, he is happily kept busy by his punditry, production company, the brand work, investments and speaking engagements.

This is a good time in his life too, with Amy and their three kids, Sadie (10), Billy (eight) and Ted (two), although he admits he can’t wait for the youngest to reach three-and-a-half, so as to be rid of the nappies and the Terrible Twos.

“It’s so true,” he laughs, knowingly. “They coined the phrase for a reason.”

And, of course, there’s the dog, Phoebe. On Phoebe’s last visit to the vet it was only when O’Driscoll returned home that Amy informed him he had taken back the wrong dog.

Only last Tuesday the driver of a double-decker bus beeped the horn and shouted: ‘Are you sure that’s your dog?’

O’Driscoll enjoyed that one. “He was driving 30 people. Like, ‘keep your focus on the road, man’.”

Laughing loudly now, he admits: “I’ll never escape it.”

Mostly working from his home, he walks his kids to school, picks them up from drama, makes dinner and does homework, albeit Amy has observed that O’Driscoll’s punditry still has him plenty of weekends.

In the Old Belvedere club house on Anglesea Road on Wednesday, O’Driscoll retained his good humour throughout an extended round of interviews and photo shoots to promote a competition to find two young Irish rugby fans as mascots for the World Cup pool games in Paris against South Africa and Scotland, based on the videos and speeches they submit. It’s being run by ‘Defender’, who also hosted a youth and minis training session for kids of all abilities between the ages of seven to 13 in Old Belvedere.

“It’s ‘a money can’t buy prize’, and there’ll be a lot of fun in going through those videos and those speeches to inspire the team. It’s a three-day stayover too. But to get to hold Sexto’s hand for such big games is really cool. Imagine as, say, an eight- or nine-year-old, to get that experience. And being on TV!” he adds, laughing.

That’s where we see O’Driscoll now, of course, whether as a co-commentator or studio analyst with BT Sport, or as the latter among ITV’s Six Nations team in a London studio. Different audiences too. Whereas BT is more in-depth for a specialist audience, he’s catering to occasional rugby viewers on terrestrial TV.

“So, you have to simplify it without being patronising. That’s the important thing, whereas BT you can really get into the minutia.”

I hope I’m not going to choke on my words. Here we are six months out and we’re talking about Ireland winning World Cups. Scotland are very quietly in the long grass, but I think you still have to back yourself, and not be Ireland of old, playing the underdog

—  Brian O'Driscoll

His enjoyment of radio, through Newstalk’s Off The Ball, is palpable. He’d hate doing a 40-minute radio interview having viewed the match just once, even if that means waking up at 5am or 6am in preparation.

“To pull something apart is almost indulgent. It’s almost like showing your skill set and your knowledge.” And working with Joe Molloy is “like you’re having a chat in a coffee shop”.

He describes this year’s Championship as a great product and he always appreciated the Six Nations.

“Great cities, good teams, hard competition, difficult to beat everyone, even when at your best.”

Friends and family went to games, too, which added to the excitement, and hence he advises caution in expanding it by adding, say, South Africa.

“You’d want to be very careful that you don’t do anything to the product that would be a negative. I would be very sceptical about that.”

He thought Ireland’s first half-hour against Wales was exceptional – “fast, frenetic, controlled” – and thereafter they had another gear. The performance against France was another notch up.

“We should have won by more. We were a lot better than them, besides being held up over the line four times. I’ve been a bit disappointed in the French this year. They’re not the side they were last year,” he says, citing the absence of Jonathan Danty and Cameron Woki, the form of Gregory Aldritt and Romain Ntamack, and that their attack from structured play needs work, as well as laziness around their defensive and attacking alignment.

He points to Josh van der Flier’s 20-metre sprint in realigning himself to the attack for the early near miss by James Lowe in Rome.

Italy, by contrast, he likens to Ireland, in their attacking shape and lines of running.

He agrees it was a tough ask on Bundee Aki to switch to outside centre, while wondering how many sets the backs even had in training.

“Defending at ‘13′, everyone knows it’s vastly different. More decision-making and less impactful tackling, that’s the reality. Garry in the first couple of games made it look so controlled, and he gave confidence to his wingers as a result.”

He cites the ‘shape’ Ringrose applied to the Irish defence for Lowe’s intercept try against Wales.

“Then, you play it a bit softer and then James does something different once or twice and then you’ve more uncertainty, and then you’ve a reminder that we’re a unit which are not used to playing with each other.

“That’s natural. But then on the positive, they created so many chances.”

Ireland’s performances, he believes, haven’t dipped below seven in the last couple of years. Last Saturday was a seven, and against very good opposition which can’t be judged on the last 20 years.

“This is a completely different Italian team. It’s to be reckoned with,” he adds, highlighting their maul defence and the collision-winning in the red zone which blunted Ireland’s pick-and-jam game.

“Getting a bit of twitchiness is no harm. I think it’s important to feel those emotions as a player, when you get down to four points. You’re number one in the world, and it’s just a reminder that you’re still human. And they [Ireland] are that type of team. There’s not much fret in them.”

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Scotland now loom, next up in Murrayfield, and in the World Cup pool finale.

“With Finn [Russell] you’ve got this brilliant ‘baller’. He can make things happen and it’s very hard to analyse him, because it’s something new every game.”

A prime example was Russell’s short, late pass for Huw Jones’s first try, whom he describes as one of the best runners in the game.

“He always has been. If you think of his tries and moments over his career, there are some guys who just get where the space is going to be, and the timing of it.”

O’Driscoll says it’s a braver decision by Gregor Townsend than Chris Harris, even though the latter is a northern hemisphere match for Ringrose defensively.

With Sione Tuipulotu at ‘12′, O’Driscoll acknowledges that the Scots have a potent blend, but he thinks Ireland will win because, ultimately, they have the better defence.

“I hope I’m not going to choke on my words. Here we are six months out and we’re talking about Ireland winning World Cups. Scotland are very quietly in the long grass, but I think you still have to back yourself, and not be Ireland of old, playing the underdog.

“You can’t do that when you’re number one in the world. You’re there on merit and we’ve got to think about going and winning the World Cup. Even if you feel very confident internally, you can’t half-back that. I think you’ve got to own it and that’s what they’re doing.

“So, we’ve got to feel we’ll beat Scotland in a World Cup game, and we’ll beat South Africa; not come second in the group and see how the cards fall. Win both and we’ll take whatever way the cards fall in the other group.

“We’ve got to own it now.”