THE OFF THE Ball crew were in Limerick last night as they hosted a pre-Six Nations roadshow in the heart of Munster rugby.
Among the stellar line-up of guests were Brian O’Driscoll, Keith Wood and former Welsh and Lions scrum-half Dwayne Peel – and there were certainly no shortage of tales told during the broadcast.
O’Driscoll and Peel, who were on the 2005 Lions tour to New Zealand together, lifted the lid on Gavin Henson to tell three priceless anecdotes, including a revelation about his pre-game grooming routine.
But the highlight of the show was the story, as told by O’Driscoll and Wood, of the former beating the crap out of Austin Healey in the dressing room during the 2001 tour.
The incident followed the tourist’s game against the New South Wales Waratahs, a fixture remembered for the disgraceful thumping Duncan McRae gave Ronan O’Gara.
The young Munster out-half was left bloodied and bruised and O’Driscoll took exception to Healy making fun of his compatriot in the dressing room afterwards.
Here’s what happened next.
“It was actually after Duncan McRae beat the crap out of [Ronan O'Gara] in that game. It was just lunacy,” Wood explained on Newstalk.
“He just lost it on the field. Austin came in. He was being an unbelievable pain in the arse, beyond all belief. He was touching ROG’s face. He said ‘come on, ROG, let’s have a little boxing match’.
“ROG has got really delicate skin, he’s got all bruises, cuts and scratches and he’s miserable and ROG just said ‘piss off, leave me alone, just get away from me.’”
“Suddenly this little voice, peeps in. ‘I’ll have a bit of that,’ says Drico. They put on a pair of boxing gloves and Drico beat the living crap out of him.’”
O’Driscoll intervened and picked up the story from there.
“I might have been a young lad but because I was good friend with ROG, I just thought that’s not on and I kind of said it before I thought about what I was doing and all of a sudden the next thing I realise there were gloves on and there was a ring being made around us and I could tell people were only on one person’s side and that was including all of the English players,” he continued.
“It was one of those out of body moments where all of a sudden you realise you’ve got a little bit of boxing technique and I started landing some shots and he started getting frustrated and started throwing haymakers and I ducked him.
“I was catching him with little kidney punches. It was one of those dream situations. I called it quits at the right time as well.”
