According to a study carried out by Pete Lunn and David Duffy for the ESRI, Brian O'Driscoll has been worth 6-7 points per game to Ireland over the last 15 years.
They also found that BOD was more influential to the outcome of a game than home advantage.
For those of you able to understand what the hell is going on in regression and correlation charts, here is one of the tables used in the study, which takes into account the 141 games BOD has played against top opposition (excluding the likes of Namibia and Georgia).
Building on this, the study also found that the team's chances of winning against these sides were sometimes improved as much as 32% when O'Driscoll was in the team.
Interestingly they also found that Ronan O'Gara's influence on whether Ireland won games he played in was quite low, while Jonny Sexton and Peter Stringer have both been highly influential – reinforcing the notion that half-backs are probably the most decisive positions in rugby.
You can read the full report here.
