Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll is busy preparing for the Magners League grand final, a big day in July and Ireland’s upcoming summer tour, but he took time out to bring us up to date with his latest blog.
I’m really looking forward to the Magners League grand final against the Ospreys at the weekend. The Heineken Cup tournament cannot be the be all and end all of any season for us as players.
Sure it is our priority and I’m not trying to downgrade the huge disappointment we felt in losing the semi-final but you have to be pragmatic. We reached the penultimate stage of the competition in trying to defend our title, losing out to the eventual winners.
The Magners League is our bread and butter in terms of a league format and no one is going to feel short changed if we manage to win our third trophy in three seasons on Saturday. Trust me when I say, this matters a great deal to us as players. We have worked hard to get to a final and require one more high quality performance.
Last weekend I flew to Paris for the ERC celebrations and ended up sitting with Geordie (Murphy), Rob Howley and Martin Johnson amongst others at the dinner.
It was good to catch up with Axel (Anthony Foley), Wally (David Wallace) and Rog (Ronan O’Gara) who were also there.
Myself, Rog, Dougie Howlett and Jonah Lomu did a shoot for adidas on the Champs Elysees the following day.
It was good fun and nice to see the number of people that turned up.
Jonah is a nice fella, a consummate pro who has done a lifetime of these gigs and despite being about eight years on from his heyday still remains as popular as ever with the fans.
Plans for July are continuing apace and given that I am off to the southern Hemisphere shortly, there is still so much to do. At this time of the season there is always a backlog of things to attend to without any other consideration, so this time it’s really hectic.
Thankfully the coaches appreciate that we have quite a lot of miles in the legs and so training has been relatively light recently. The analysis for the Ospreys match was done last week and we’ll have two more training sessions on the Tuesday and Thursday ahead of the match.
Once the final is over, I’ll have a few days off before linking up with the Ireland squad, hopefully still possessing a beaming smile from the weekend.
We’d like to send Cheiks (Michael Cheika), Riff (Alan Gaffney), Whits (Chris Whitaker) and Kurt (McQuilkin) off in style.
Related Links –
Follow Brian on www.twitter.com/BrianODriscoll
Brian’s blog is available on www.bethedifference.ie
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