But again, there was a far more serious wider purpose to the task. A squad of players, who didn’t really know each other that well beforehand, had come together and learned a bit about each other and learned to work together as a team. Of course, there is no substitute for training and playing together, so Brian was delighted when a pre-tour game against Argentina was set up, but this gathering had done a great deal to boost team spirit and morale.
Brian returned to Dublin at the end of the get-together, and it was only a matter of days before he discovered there was a nasty flipside to his elevated level of fame.
He had been living very happily at ‘number 35’ and had found he could go about his business quite easily without too much hassle. He lived surprisingly modestly for a man of his stature and was happy just being an ordinary bloke when he was among his local community. However, his profile had undoubtedly rocketed in the last few months, especially in the few weeks since he was named Lions captain. Things were about to change, and Brian was about to get a very rude awakening and see the other side of life as a famous sports star.
Brian returned from the get-together in Wales to find youngsters literally camped out in his garden waiting for him. Across the road, he could see several photographers hiding. He had no front gate and no privacy. This was becoming a problem and potential threat to his safety. He knew the time was right to move.
He had his eye on a property in Dublin’s Herbert Road, but he couldn’t afford it just yet. Brian had become something of a property bore just recently, and would flick to the property pages in the local paper even before checking the rugby results.
Brian was also still slightly distracted by the Leinster situation. They had finished a disappointing third in the Celtic League, way behind the Ospreys and Munster, and Brian met with some senior members of the squad to discuss the best way forward. Brian held the view that Leinster urgently needed a specialist coach who could take their individual games forward as well as put an overall game plan into practice.
In the days and weeks that followed, Brian found himself obliged to do more interviews than he had ever done before. As Ireland captain, he was now well used to having to do a number of interviews per day. Now he was captain of the Lions, and this meant the intensity and quantity of the interviews would only increase. But Brian stuck to his well-rehearsed routine. He remained firmly on message and made sure he said the same thing in every interview. He knew from past experience that an attempt at trying to be humorous could easily be taken out of context and this was certainly not the time to be starting a war of words with anyone.
The key point Brian tried to get across in every interview was that all 44 players getting on the plane on 25 May stood a realistic chance of getting in the Test side. The same could not be said of the 2001 tour. There was competition for places. Even a fit Jonny Wilkinson could not take his place in the team for granted with Stephen Jones in such superb form.
Brian made it clear in these interviews that he did not even dare take his own place in the team for granted. Yes, he was captain, and, by right, that should mean that he was an automatic choice. Yet he knew that he had to prove every day that he was worthy of his place as there were players who would more than hold their own at centre. He knew he had to lead by example, to play the best rugby of his life and encourage those around him to do the same.
Brian stated that, for him, a Lions tour to New Zealand held as much gravitas as playing in a World Cup final. He also repeatedly praised Sir Clive Woodward and the coaching setup, and said the preparation to date could not have been better.
At the end of April, Brian took a break from the Lions build-up by playing for Leinster in their Celtic Cup quarter-final clash against Glasgow. The tournament might not have been at the top of Brian’s priority list at the beginning of the season, but Leinster had crashed and burned in all other competitions and capturing this piece of silverware would give a much-needed morale boost to the squad following Declan Kidney’s departure.
Leinster won the game but the performance was hardly convincing. They had moments of skilful brilliance but these were more than outweighed by shoddy defending that almost allowed Glasgow to steal the game.
Unsurprisingly, it was the in-form Brian who was at the heart of Leinster’s most impressive move of the match when he charged into the defence and threw a back-flip pass into space, knowing full well Gordon D’Arcy was running into it. Gordon then passed out to Girvan Dempsey to score a well-rehearsed, perfectly executed try.
The following week Brian declared that enough was enough and there would be no more press interviews for the time being. He decided that there was enough physical and psychological preparation to be done in the short time that remained before the plane left and he felt he had been more than generous with the time he had given the press and had easily fulfilled his obligations as captain.
In one of his last interviews, Paul Ackford in the Sunday Telegraph drew attention to the size of Brian’s arse. Paul was taken aback by how stocky Brian was when he saw him in the flesh. The truth was that the game had changed a great deal in the last few years and Brian was a good example of how world-class centres in the future would be built.
Brian received some encouraging news from Clive when he was told that Jonny had come through a full 80 minutes for Newcastle, scoring six goals and setting up a try against London Irish. It’s hard to see how the news could have been more encouraging, but Clive wanted to see him play another 80 minutes before making his final decision.
Brian began to focus purely on the rugby, and there was nothing quite like a match against Munster for focusing Brian’s attentions. This was the Celtic Cup semi-final, and Brian did not underestimate the importance of this game.
Yes, it was undoubtedly important for Leinster to receive a lift after the season they’d had. Yet it was also important that Brian and all of the other Lions tour players who took to the pitch had some competitive match practice with the days ticking by until the plane left.
The match was a typical niggly encounter between the two sides. Kiwi Dave Holwell was sent off for Leinster over a petty incident with just five minutes to play. The game was tight and this left Leinster feeling unbalanced and allowed an Anthony Foley try to steal the game for Munster in the final minute.
It was a disappointing and frustrating end to a pretty miserable season for Leinster. The season promised so much yet everything fell away, although there was no denying the part off-the-field problems at the club contributed towards the disappointment.
Brian knew there wasn’t time to dwell on it and he simply had to focus on the Lions from now on. That same evening Clive phoned Brian to tell him that Jonny had come through another 80 minutes and was fit to go on tour. This gave Brian’s mood a massive lift. He firmly believed that Jonny was the best fly-half in the world and his inclusion in the squad would rumble the All Blacks. He also knew that Stephen Jones was in the form of his life and Jonny would have to stay on his toes to keep his place in the team. Inevitably, there were a few injury worries in the squad but this news gave a massive boost to Brian and lifted the morale of the whole squad.
Clive was less happy with his former employers at the RFU over their attitude towards England coaches and staff involved with the Lions tour. They had each received a letter asking them to log any time over 15 minutes they spent on Lions business before their contracts officially began on 17 May. Clive was understandably outraged at the pettiness of it but soon decided not to waste his time fighting a battle when the squad needed to be focused on other things. Brian saw this for the comical squabble it was, and decided not to waste his time elbowing in on something so silly.
The following day, Brian’s problems were put firmly into perspective when he discovered that the Leinster team doctor had suffered an unbearable tragedy on the Saturday. Jim McShane’s three-year-old son Teddy had been killed in a drowning accident. Brian was very fond of Jim and his wife Dolores and was greatly saddened by the tragedy. At the funeral just two days later at Dun Laoghaire, Brian was moved to tears by the sight of the little white coffin being carried