Four-time British & Irish Lions Brian O’Driscoll is relishing one last crack at world champions New Zealand ahead of Ireland’s forthcoming autumn internationals.
Ireland host Samoa, Australia and the All Blacks this weekend and while O’Driscoll has played little part in Leinster’s season to date, he’s eager to be involved as Joe Schmidt begins his tenure.
O’Driscoll has faced New Zealand 13 times in his career – on 12 occasions for Ireland once when captaining the Lions in 2005, only to be carried off with a shoulder injury within seconds of the start of the first Test.
Indeed, Ireland have never beaten the All Blacks in their 27 meetings and last time they met, New Zealand dished out a 60-0 in Hamilton in the summer of 2012.
The week previous however, Ireland lost 22-19 and O’Driscoll is determined to finally get one over the world’s number one ranked team.
“It’s the one I’ve never managed to achieve. It’s the last-chance saloon for me on that, so it’s all or nothing,” O’Driscoll told the Irish Examiner.
“I don’t know if a one-off game could be a career highlight in comparison to winning a Grand Slam but it would certainly be a close second (if we could win).
“We let ourselves down back [in Hamilton] but you can’t dwell on those sort of occasions. When it goes against you sometimes, it really goes against you.
“I don’t know if we’ll necessarily use the anger from that. It’s a new team, a new coach and a new philosophy so we’ll treat things very differently this time around.”
