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The start of the Lions tour is upon us but with a lack of brilliant talent at their disposal I am very worried about Brian O’Driscoll. He was on the winning side in the Heineken Cup final and good luck to him. But anyone taking a sober or neutral view would have deduced that the spring and the pace in his legs were completely absent. If a visitor from Mars had arrived at Murrayfield, he would quickly have come to the conclusion that the great centres on the field were Danny Hipkiss and Ayoola Erinle of Leicester.

A few months ago, the Irish nation seemed to rise up as one at my insistence that O’Driscoll was by no means a certain selection for the Test matches on the Lions tour. I said that as part of our round table discussion on Lions selection, which attracted an incredible 650,000 hits on The Times website.

Some people concluded that I was winding up the Irish and, admittedly, they as a nation are in the Kiwi category when it comes to a total failure to spot irony. But the truth is, that I meant it. O’Driscoll, beyond any doubt, has been an all-time great for Ireland. He has never been the most consistently brilliant of players although that might have something to do with the fact that he has played in quite a few ropey Irish sides. His record with the Lions, the only true arbiter of all-time greatness, is not remotely in the same league as someone like Jeremy Guscott, who not only played in three consecutive Lions series, two of which the Lions won, but also turned some of those Tests with his own brilliance.

Yet O’Driscoll is clearly influential. He scored killer tries at key stages of Ireland’s victories over England and Wales last season. As an extra flanker with his strength and competitiveness over the ball, he was outstanding. Yet the Lions want him to be the old Brian, with the old pace and cutting edges out wide. It seems to me that he has lost a considerable amount of the old surge and gas. In some of his breakaway tries this season he has almost been overhauled when well clear and on Saturday even his hour of triumph was clouded as he ended the match limping unhappily on the wing. These days, few matches go by without him having to undergo protracted treatment.

Let us hope and pray that he has some brilliant matches left in the tank and that he is just fooling us. I can tell you now that he will hardly play for the Lions before the first Test in a bid to keep him fresh. Let us hope that he is rejuvenated.

The buzz around rugby at the moment is that the replacement Lions, who have come in for the players who have to miss the tour, are all improvements. There is one position in which the change is not beneficial. Tom Shanklin, the Welsh centre, was in the form of his life, and unless O’Driscoll can re-discover himself with the ball in hand, then the loss of Shanklin will be the cruellest blow.

There is no question in my mind, that a fit Shanklin would have played 13 in the Tests.

Passing shot for Erinle

Here is the tale of another centre. Ayoola Erinle has suddenly blossomed in the Leicester midfield. This after a career when he always threatened to come storming through the Wasps team into a career with England and the Lions, only to be stuck on the bench and eventually released to Leicester.

He has hardly figured with the Tigers but only made the late charge this season due to injuries, and is off to Biarritz for a new contract in France, leaving behind the country which he never quite stormed after all.

He was a victim of the boring and dogmatic nature of many coaching outfits who are prepared to fret anxiously about one aspect of a player’s game and ignore all his talents. It was said that Erinle was a bad passer. “He is 17 stone, he is a brilliant runner, he can step and he can score tries from 18 metres,” Shaun Edwards once said. “Why would you want him to pass?”