Best: O’Brien’s views ‘brutally honest’
Ireland captain Rory Best has described Sean O’Brien’s views on the British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand as ‘‘brutally honest’’.
O’Brien caused a stir last month when he opened up about the Lions’ tour, and what he thought were mistakes made by the coaching staff that contributed to them drawing their series with the All Blacks rather than winning it.
Specifically, O’Brien felt the Lions had overtrained on the Thursday before the first test, which was the only one the All Blacks won.
‘‘On the first week [of the first test], we had a triple [session] day,’’ he said.
‘‘[The] lads’ legs were heavy on the Thursday and we were playing the All Blacks on Saturday. We did nearly a similar thing in the last week. So maybe it’s more [from] a coaching point of view, in terms of taking lessons.’’
Best was a team-mate of O’Brien’s on that tour, and is his captain with Ireland, and he told the BBC: ‘‘Sean has been brutally honest with how he feels. You can take from that what you want, but that’s Sean.’’
Best captained the Lions in their final two midweek games, a win over the Chiefs and a draw with the Hurricanes, but didn’t play in any of the tests, so couldn’t comment on O’Brien’s concerns regarding over-training.
‘‘It was certainly a big session on the Thursday but I wasn’t playing on the Saturday, so I don’t know what the effect was for those boys.’’
Best told the BBC he wouldn’t try to guess how O’Brien was feeling at the time.
‘‘[He’s] been around long enough and he knows how he felt going into the first test, he knows how he wants to feel, going into probably the biggest game of his career, and obviously he didn’t feel like that, and he felt the need to express that.’’