Brian O'Driscoll Quotes

As you get older, the defeats become more painful. They definitely hurt more.

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.

I've been a professional rugby player all my life; I don't really know anything different.

It's rare enough as an older generation player that you're 100% fit - there's always something niggling.

One thing I learnt early on my career is that personal gratification takes second place.

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.

I think my form dipped after the Six Nations in 2007, from the World Cup onwards.

You have perspective when little people come into your life. You take the best things you have and let them overshadow your disappointment.

Timmy Horan was a childhood hero. He was a great distributor, elusive, good stepper, very physical, defensively very sound. What a rounded player.

I think training and being dedicated is very important, but one aspect that I always live by is that I enjoy myself in what I do!

I still get a great buzz from rugby.

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.

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.

Rugby takes its toll.

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.'

Last summer was probably the biggest disappointment of my career, but now I have something bad with which to balance the good. I will no longer take anything for granted.

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.

My nutritional knowledge is good enough to figure out what's good, what's bad, and where my leeway is.

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.

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.

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.

You can't rely on your defence to win a World Cup.

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.

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.

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.

Growing up, I supported Manchester United, and my hero was Mark Hughes.

I enjoy training so much, sometimes I don't want it to stop.

I'm very much a glass-half-full person.

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.

I had massive admiration for lots of players. Richard Hill would be up there, along with Martin Johnson.

I have interests outside of rugby and have been cultivating them for when I do decide to hang up the boots.

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.

That's what happens in the world. You get offered superior contracts.

I just want to concentrate on my rugby and enjoy it and live in the moment.

My missus knows to leave me alone.

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.

I've never bought a sports car.

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.

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.

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.

I get burnt in the sun, so there's no point me getting pecs for when I take my shirt off in the summer.

It feels great to be a two-time Six Nations winner.

I have ambitions to set records which will be hard to chase down, like getting more than 100 caps for Ireland.

If you start thinking about retirement in six months' time, you're already there.

I don't really want to be the centre of attention.

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.

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.

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.

I love going out every day and training and being part of the team, and having friendships built up over a number of years. It's those aspects of sport that I feel are really important.

I would say I thrive in a competitive environment.

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

Just because you lost your last game doesn't mean you change anything.

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.

If you can beat New Zealand, then you're probably going to win the World Cup.

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.

It's 45 minutes after the game right now and I still don't want to take this jersey off. That's because I know that when I do it'll be for the last time ...

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.

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.

The victory is always sweeter ... winning things with friends.

The Polynesian guys are pretty strong without going to the gym.

You want to win everything you are in.