One thing that never fails to make for good radio is when former rugby players talk about fights that were not seen by the public eye on Newstalk's 'Off The Ball'.
The time when Keith Wood spoke of his delight at seeing Brian O'Driscoll beat the shite out of Austin Healy will forever be one of our absolute favourite radio moments, but BOD was again explaining a bust-up with a teammate on Friday night's episode which featured injured Leinster winger Fergus McFadden as a guest.
The discussion came about as McFadden was talking about the week he spent training Muay Thai kickboxing in Thailand this summer, and when asked if he ever got into it with someone on the training ground, he told of how he once had it out with Drico, of all people.
The situation we had, the game was getting feisty and guys are getting particularly tired. It's generally when things happen in training.
I think I blocked Brian and we went on a bit of a run, scoring afterwards. Then he just kind of said 'if you do that again, I'm going to hit you a dig' and of course I didn't learn my lesson and I did it again. We just squared up to each other and he threw one and I threw a couple of handbags back and then we got pulled away. I had a small gash around my eye. But that's just training ground stuff.
To be fair, O'Driscoll did warn him, Brian soon gave his account of events, claiming that he felt bad about what had happened when he noticed he had drawn blood.
Then I started feeling bad and I saw a little bit of blood and I thought 'oh God, that's unnecessary.
O'Driscoll could really handle himself. These stories always seem to end with the other bloke coming off worse. We were also treated to another BOD scrap story as he quickly told of a time he and Shane Horgan had it out, before laughing about it moments later:
I had a bit of a fracas with Shane Horgan in Joe [Schmidt's] first year as well and the exact same situation...exhausted, he blocked me a couple of times and we went at it and then we went out to our respective wings and as the game went on, I glanced over to him. He looked at me and we broke out laughing.
It was massively entertaining radio and you can listen back to Friday night's 'Off The Ball' in full over on Newstalk.com.
[via Newstalk.com]
