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For the last time this weekend, Wales will come up against Brian O’Driscoll.

They do so against this nonsensical backdrop of a so-called row with Warren Gatland over his decision to omit O’Driscoll from the third Lions Test during the summer.

Modern society being what it is, I guess it’s inevitable people will go on and on about the whys and wherefores of what happened in Australia.

But for me, and no doubt Gatland and Brian himself, it is water under the bridge.

I just hope Brian’s legacy means he is remembered for what he is, a truly great rugby player, rather than this controversy which keeps being raked up.

O’Driscoll isn’t just one of the finest players we’ve seen of the modern generation, he is one of the finest in the history of the game. Full stop.

Put it this way, I would certainly have been happy to have had him on my shoulder during the 1970s.

In fact, he reminds me so much of Mike Gibson, who did play next to me with the victorious ‘71 Lions and who is probably the most complete back I have seen.

Brian is very much in that class. Imagine Ireland having the pair of them together in the centre? That would be some force, I can tell you.

In top level sport you have very good players... and then you have the exceptional ones who make the difference when it matters in the big games. It is why they are called big game players.

For me, there are two extraordinary things about O’Driscoll. One is that in modern rugby, where the hits are huge, the intensity immense, the injuries pretty constant, he has lasted at the top for fully 15 years.

Even more startling is the fact that he has maintained his level of performance at nine out of 10 over pretty much that entire period of time.

There is a cliche about leading by example and O’Driscoll epitomises that. Ireland would simply not have been anything like the force they have been were it not for the influence of their talisman, captain for so many of those years.

Time and again it was O’Driscoll, inevitably, who popped up with a match-winning moment – whether a try, a scoring pass or a last-ditch tackle – to lift the Irish to new heights.

He was the difference between them winning and losing games. Not many players have that type of impact, particularly when it lasts for well over a decade.

That is why when he does retire at the end of this year, we do look at O’Driscoll’s legacy for the right reasons, and not remember him for this unfortunate rumpus which is being dragged up yet again.

Look, let’s analyse Gatland’s decision for that third Test in Sydney. International coaches are given the job in the first place because they are good at it, because they are prepared to make the big calls when necessary.

Many, many years ago, I was fortunate enough to get to know England’s World Cup winning manager Sir Alf Ramsey because we were representatives of the same sports company.

People used to talk of Sir Alf as being aloof, but the more we worked together on promotions, the more his guard dropped and he began to take me into his confidence.

I still recall on one trip back from Aberdeen Sir Alf explaining why he left Jimmy Greaves, the popular choice, out of his team for that 1966 World Cup Final against West Germany.

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Greaves, the chirpy Londoner, was a real man of the people, a goal scorer supreme widely viewed as one of the greatest of his generation.

A bit like Brian O’Driscoll, you might say. Yet just like O’Driscoll, Greaves was left out when it really mattered, Sir Alf giving Geoff Hurst the nod.

“It would have been so easy for me to bow to public opinion and go with Jimmy,” Sir Alf told me. “But every time I went to bed, every morning when I woke up, I saw Geoff in my team, not Jimmy. I had to go with what I thought was right, so I did.”

Sir Alf made the big call... and Hurst responded with a hat-trick.

If Gatland thinks he had it tough over O’Driscoll, imagine the flak which would have flown Ramsey’s way had Hurst not come off!

But that’s the role of the man in charge. He calls it as he sees it, the buck stops with him.

If Gatland had got it wrong over O’Driscoll, some of the criticism would have been fair enough, But not only did his team win, they did it in old-fashioned Lions style, playing with panache and running the legs off the Wallabies.

I’m sure Brian O’Driscoll himself is fed up of being bombarded with questions about Gatland dropping him.

Let’s just get out on the pitch and play, will be his attitude.

Always the professional, doubtless he will play very well against Wales again.

As he always seems to... whoever the opposition.

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