“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Rugby gave me a confidence. I was quite shy and relatively timid, but it gave me the confidence to be a little bit more out-going and back myself a bit more.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I just want to concentrate on my rugby and enjoy it and live in the moment.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“The victory is always sweeter… winning things with friends.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You’ve to celebrate the good days because there are brutal days that make the good ones sweet.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“The great thing about playing team sport is you win and lose together, and the pain is never as bad when you share it.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“For me, it took five years to understand what professionalism meant. But I’m more settled now. I’m married, life changes, and I’ve been lucky in managing my injuries.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“The big upside to being captain is it’s a huge honour, but the downside is that there is definitely extra pressure.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“When you are captain, you are never speaking for yourself.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“My missus knows to leave me alone.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Rugby takes its toll.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You never sit on your laurels. It is always a case of trying to work on your deficiencies as much as working on your strengths.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Team sports are very important for shaping personalities. It’s important that kids understand the mentality behind playing team sports and playing for one another and playing with friends.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“A physical therapist does some unbelievable stretching with me.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“The 2001 tour to Australia would have been a great highlight in my career if the Lions had won the series. That might sound strange because it was a great tour in many ways, but, for me, the more time goes by, the less of a career highlight it becomes, and just more of a frustration.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“If you can beat New Zealand, then you’re probably going to win the World Cup.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“When you’ve done something for more than a third of your life, your whole adult life, and then all of a sudden you’re going to have to switch off and say, ‘No more,’ you want to grasp as much of it and enjoy the last few years of it as much as you can. Because you can’t get those years back.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“One thing I learnt early on my career is that personal gratification takes second place.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“There’s ego in all of us rugby players.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I have always played into the belief that you are only ever borrowing the jersey; you never own the jersey because someone has gone before you and there is going to be someone after you, so it’s a case of giving the jersey maximum respect.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I still get a great buzz from rugby.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You have perspective when little people come into your life. You take the best things you have and let them overshadow your disappointment.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Practise things you’re good at. Keep on top of things you’re not so good at, but be world-class at your best. Never think, ‘I’m very good at this and that, I can leave those for a bit.’”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“What do you remember about Jason Robinson? His feet. Not how improved he was under a high ball or his kicking skills. Everyone remembers those feet. He could go round you in a phone box.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“If you stop doing a skill you’ve done for years for any period of time, there’s an adjustment period to get it back. In anything you do. Motor skills won’t work as fast, because repetition is everything.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Until you win a series, it’s difficult to place yourself in that elite group of great Lions players. It’s not enough to produce one-off performances or be nearly-men.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Timmy Horan was a childhood hero. He was a great distributor, elusive, good stepper, very physical, defensively very sound. What a rounded player.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“It’s happened a couple of times in training when I hyper-extend my back. Some facet joints send all the muscles in my lower back and lumbar-spine into spasm.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Just because you lost your last game doesn’t mean you change anything.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I used to love looking at a recipe, getting all the bits and pieces in the shops, getting them ready and prepared… I don’t really have the time to do that anymore.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’m fairly adventurous with my eating. I’ve tried kangaroo, and Moreton Bay bugs, which are a kind of lobster, are so good.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“My nutritional knowledge is good enough to figure out what’s good, what’s bad, and where my leeway is.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I found in the past when I did a bit of punditry, I was very conscious of not saying anything negative about people I played against, because players are elephants and they remember when someone says something – I stored things for years and just waited for my opportunity.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“That’s what happens in the world. You get offered superior contracts.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“People talk about loyalty of players to clubs. But in the everyday world, you don’t see people being loyal to their company when they’re getting offered considerably better deals elsewhere.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’m very happy to have been a one-club man, but I wouldn’t shoot down guys who have gone off and played in multiple clubs either because, essentially, it is an earning that people are after.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I would say I thrive in a competitive environment.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’ve got my head fixed on the next part of life. I know there will be an adjusting period of just not being a rugby player for a while, and over that period I’ll get my head around what the next challenge involves.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I had massive admiration for lots of players. Richard Hill would be up there, along with Martin Johnson.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“As you get older, the defeats become more painful. They definitely hurt more.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I had come across a few sports psychologists, and I had no time for nearly all of them. I just don’t think they work in a team environment.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’ve never bought a sports car.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Dressing rooms can be vicious places, in the best possible way, from a slagging point of view.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“When you talk to family and friends, they can’t tell you anything from an impartial point of view because they have a vested interest in you.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Everyone has tests in their life. They come in lots of different forms. I had two or three together, which definitely challenged me as a person and as a sportsman. The big thing is how you react to those situations. You want to come out positively at the other end, and that’s what I focused on doing.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I would always treat my attacking game as the more natural part. With defence, you have to get yourself in positions to understand the game and understand situations and that might not be as natural a thing.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Games bring another level out in you. There is no way you can train to the same intensity when you are playing a game. It is just impossible. Your head won’t allow you to do it. Because the adrenalin of a game and the importance of it steps it up to another level.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I need to worry about the things that I am in control of.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I tell you one you straight off in Scotland – Nick de Luca. I don’t see his name quoted, but I’ve played against Nick quite a lot and he is a good player – one of the trickiest centres I’ve played against.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You go into the Lions camp with preconceived ideas about players and teams and then find guys are actually very different, and the beauty of the Lions is that all those characters are moulded into it. I find that exciting.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I was exposed to the gym at about 28. I never had a huge love or appetite for it – it was just a means to an end.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I get burnt in the sun, so there’s no point me getting pecs for when I take my shirt off in the summer.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’m not privy to the English set-up, but at the academies in Ireland, there is a huge focus on the weights room as opposed to whether they can throw a 10-metre pass on the run. They should be rugby players becoming athletes, not athletes becoming rugby players.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“The Polynesian guys are pretty strong without going to the gym.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I have ambitions to set records which will be hard to chase down, like getting more than 100 caps for Ireland.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I enjoy training so much, sometimes I don’t want it to stop.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“It feels great to be a two-time Six Nations winner.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Aaron Cruden and Beauden Barrett have both been decent, but Dan Carter takes it on to a different level, and he kicks his goals better than both of them.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Before there was any chance to go to England, I changed schools, and it was rugby from there on in.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I think my form dipped after the Six Nations in 2007, from the World Cup onwards.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“There is no point winning the semi if you don’t win the final. It’s as simple as that. No one will remember a big semifinal if you lose the final, so you have to do it all again.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“If you start thinking about retirement in six months’ time, you’re already there.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“In your mid-20s, you think you’ll go on for eternity. Then a point comes where you realise that’s not going to be the case.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I was a football fan before I became a rugby fan.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Growing up, I supported Manchester United, and my hero was Mark Hughes.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“If you can be a good role model for people, well, great. You try and live your sporting life and the rest of your life as well as you can, and if it’s something that people admire, well, fantastic. I don’t sit at home and think about it too much, though – there’s plenty of other things in my life going on.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I didn’t know Ian Smith myself!”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’ve been a professional rugby player all my life; I don’t really know anything different.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You want to win everything you are in.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I don’t care that people thought I was one way for my whole career because now that I am not attached to a team, I can have my own opinion, I can have my own voice. I can link myself to my own thought process rather than a generic message most teams try to get across.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You can’t rely on your defence to win a World Cup.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“There is still a big onus to be coached. I understand the best teams don’t need a huge amount of coaching, but that’s when a coach should decide not to do coaching.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Being recognised by Guinness World Records in their 60th year is a real honour. It’s also a real privilege for me to be positioned beside such sporting greats.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“Your name or what you’ve done on the rugby pitch is not going to carry you through for the rest of your life. I realise I’m going to have to eventually do something else, and that does frighten me a little bit.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I don’t really want to be the centre of attention.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“In a team situation, I think the players are more inclined to give the answer they believe the psychologist is looking for rather than maybe being totally honest.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I have interests outside of rugby and have been cultivating them for when I do decide to hang up the boots.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’m very much a glass-half-full person.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I was quite small as a kid and maybe a little afraid physically. When I grew into myself, the realisation changed. That when you hurt yourself, it’s transient; it doesn’t stay forever.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“You cannot say things one week and then behave differently.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’ve always found when I was captain when other people were doing the talking for me, I didn’t need to say as much, and when I did say one or two things, people tended to listen all the more.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I’m an eternal optimist.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“If you stick around long enough and you do enough of the right things, you get seen in a largely positive light.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“I don’t feel comfortable with the kind of celebrity that has come my way – and I’m not very good at it, either.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“As the summer moves on, there are Saturday nights when I come home and find friends I haven’t even been out with sitting up in the hot tub.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“There have been a couple of things I’ve been involved in launching that have been a bit more public, but I’ve always had other things tipping away in the background.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
“It’s rare enough as an older generation player that you’re 100% fit – there’s always something niggling.”
― Brian O’Driscoll
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