O'Driscoll joined the ranks of rugby's centurious last year thanks to his six caps for the British & Irish Lions
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Brian O'Driscoll will win his 100th Ireland cap this weekend but the Irish Times' Johnny Watterson insists the talismanic centre will not get wrapped up in the occasion.
"Now the shirt fits. In his first game for Ireland a callow Irish centre was in danger of being caught by a gust of wind and blown across the Australian landscape. Twenty years old and not a game for Leinster bagged, Brian O’Driscoll launched himself into a career that seemed to inflate season by season. Three years after that summer tour he was handed the captaincy. At 31, he hasn’t let go.
"Along the road the ill fit of those early years has become more tailored and O’Driscoll now speaks like a player who can respect the significance of his 100th cap against Wales on Saturday, even see the end of the career approach. But he refuses to be caught in twilight moments. With Wales to beat, there is almost a fear of softening, of losing control to the emotion.
"There is also an agreeably hard edge to O’Driscoll, a pragmatic streak and a stubbornness not to be drawn into a week that could wrap itself around him like a comfort blanket and carry him into Croke Park and Wales believing in every magical thing that has been written so far."
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