Top 55 Brian ODriscoll Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

You’ve to celebrate the good days because there are brutal days that make the good ones sweet.

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.

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 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.

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

I still get a great buzz from rugby.

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

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

My missus knows to leave me alone.

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.

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.

A physical therapist does some unbelievable stretching with me.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Before there was any chance to go to England, I changed schools, and it was rugby from there on in.

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

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

If you stick around long enough and you do enough of the right things, you get seen in a largely positive light.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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’ve never bought a sports car.

You want to win everything you are in.

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.

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

You cannot say things one week and then behave differently.

I need to worry about the things that I am in control of.

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.

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.’

The great thing about playing team sport is you win and lose together, and the pain is never as bad when you share it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I didn’t know Ian Smith myself!

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.

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.