Tonight, Brian O'Driscoll was on Off the Ball and he described the moment when he knew his pace wasn't the same as it used to be. BOD was pressed by Ger Gilroy to pinpoint one moment when he realised he wasn't as quick as his younger self, and O'Driscoll came up with an example that is clearly still fresh in the memory:
I would still be playing if my legs were still going because I still have a appetite for it, but the reality is that you start doing damage to your reputation and the frustration gets too much when players that you perceive to be relatively average make you look silly.
There was one against Scarlets a few years ago. I can't remember your man's name, he wasn't capped. And he stood me up on the outside and burnt me, and I got an arm on his jersey but couldn't get him down and he went in for a score.
Thanks to our fine readers (Arwel Jones and Michael McClintock, we salute you) we realised that "your man" is in fact one Gareth Maule, who left the Scarlets in 2014 to move to Bristol, which he departed last November by mutual consent after an injury-hit spell at the club. 29-year-old Maule, who played underage for Wales but never at senior level, has most recently been plying his trade as player/coach of Ebbw Vale rugby club in the 'Principality Premiership' (the Welsh Premier Division).
But on these shores he will forever be known as the man who first planted the seeds of doubt in the mind of one of our true greats.
We did some very extensive research and found this video of the incident BOD is describing (credit to Ruddy Darter for the original video). It was a perfectly ordinary autumn Saturday in October (the 20th, to be precise), and Leinster travelled to Parc y Scarlets to play them in what was then the Heineken Cup. And all was going to plan.
Until the clock ticked into the now-immortal 54th minute...
Warning: the video below contains some highly disturbing footage.
Like any horrific video on the internet, it just can't be unseen. The way he lines BOD up, side-steps him like he's just come off the Blackrock 'C's and mercilessly burns him on the way to the line...
Leinster won the game 20-13, but the damage had been done.
The only solution to being haunted by these horrors is to watch this, over and over again:
