O’DRISCOLL AND DAVIES ON THAT LIONS CALL
IT was one of the great Lions controversies of modern times – Warren Gatland dropping Brian O’Driscoll for the deciding Test of the 2013 tour of Australia.
Now, seven years on, the two players at the centre of the storm – O’Driscoll and Jonathan Davies – have sat down to share their memories of that remarkable week.
They had played together in midfield in the opening two Tests, but the return to fitness of Jamie Roberts created a “three into two doesn’t go” dilemma.
In the end, it was O’Driscoll who missed out, with Gatland going for an all-Welsh centre pairing and the Irish legend not even making the bench.
Gatland’s decision provoked a huge outcry in the Emerald Isle, while the selection of no fewer than 10 Wales players in the starting line-up for the Sydney decider caused much consternation.
As it turned out, Gatland was vindicated, with the Lions romping to a 41-16 victory to seal a 2-1 series triumph.
But the omission of O’Driscoll from that crunch decider has continued to be a big talking point down the years.
Now the Ireland legend has revisited the saga in conversation with Davies for a new BT Sport digital four-part series called Lions Call, where he speaks to members of the last tour party.
Raising the subject, O’Driscoll says: “I know my experiences of the third week, it was well documented.
“What about yours? How did you deal with the mini circus around it when you had a Test match to play?”
Davies replies: “I didn’t expect to be selected and that was initially the shock.
“I remember getting on the bus and thinking ‘Right, you’ve got to knuckle down this week even more so.’
“To be fair to you, you walked past me on the bus, shook my hand and congratulated me.
“I thought it would go pretty wild, with the reaction back home and stuff like that.
“I expected it and probably geared myself up for it.
“After that, it was more the social media stuff. Like you said, the little circus.
“You are getting tweeted stuff and you are just like ‘wow.’”
O’Driscoll chips in to ask: “Did you just park that then for the rest of the week? Did you delete social media or take it with a pinch of salt?”
Answering, Davies says: “I took it with a pinch of salt. I remember speaking to my brother (James) on FaceTime and he was laughing at it.
“He was reading my tweets back to me and I was like ‘I’ve already read them, I don’t need to listen to them any more!’
“I probably used it as a motivating factor, like I will prove you wrong. I wanted to do the best I could and make sure we won the series.
“I think that’s what focused me.
“Gats asked me on the Friday ‘How’s it been?’ and I was like ‘Well, yeah, OK.’
“He was like ‘Yeah, I know, exactly’
“He said ‘Just make sure we win and we’ll be OK’
“I was like ‘Yeah, OK.’” Adding his thoughts, O’Driscoll said: “I obviously had a lot of support from Ireland, but your own country backs one of their own, so it must have overwhelming support from Wales and just a couple of dodgy tweets coming in from Ireland?”
Davies responds: “Yeah, the locations were Dublin on all the tweets!”
Whereas it was O’Driscoll’s fourth Lions tour, it was the then 25-year-old Welshman’s first.
“I remember watching the squad announcement for 2009 and Stephen Jones and Matthew Rees got named while we were all in the changing rooms at the Scarlets watching it together,” recalled Davies.
“You felt so good for them. You could tell how much it meant to them and I was think