Umaga and O’Driscoll: Spare us the spear questions

Former All Blacks captain Tana Umaga and Brian O’Driscoll insist they have moved on from the “speargate” tackle that ended the Lions skipper’s 2005 tour of New Zealand — and hope the rest of the world can too.

O’Driscoll was ruled out of the rest of the series with a dislocated shoulder after he was upended in a tackle by Umaga and teammate Keven Mealamu 41 seconds into the first test in Christchurch.

The All Blacks went on to win the match 21-3 and the following two tests to complete a series whitewash.

Fallout from the controversy continued to follow both Umaga and O’Driscoll but 13 years on the pair have finally buried the hatchet.

“We were just chatting about it the other night. I get asked about it all the time,” O’Driscoll told the Irish Examiner as he and Umaga fronted a promotion ahead of Sunday’s test (NZT) between the All Blacks and Ireland in Dublin.

“In any Q&A over the last 13 years, it is probably the one question I can guarantee. It was talked about last year because it was that 12-year [Lions] cycle. We parked it a long time ago.”

The former Ireland centre

admits he and Umaga could have resolved their differences sooner.

Umaga shed light on the bad blood that lingered between the pair in his 2007 biography before they eventually shook hands in 2009. Both hope the matter can now finally be laid to rest.

“Was it unfortunate? Yeah,” said O’Driscoll. “Should you have dealt with it slightly differently? Yeah. You’ve got to move on. You can’t bring those sorts of things through life.

“We’re able to . . . take the piss about it now, properly. Sometimes you don’t get an opportunity to meet up with people in a controlled environment.

“To have a get together and chew the fat and properly get to talk and not feel scared by it is refreshing and, I hope, it’s dead after this.”

Umaga, now preparing for his fourth season as coach of the Blues Super Rugby franchise, echoed O’Driscoll’s sentiments, saying the opportunity for the pair to talk at length had helped heal old wounds.

“That was the key thing for us, to have time together,” he said.

“To really sit down and chew the fat around that was great.

“We can’t change the past. Yet, it is something whenever I do something that I get asked about. As Brian has said, hopefully this will really put it behind people and we will make peace with it now.”