Brian O’Driscoll: Finn Russell has ‘license to do whatever he wants’ after Lions ‘cover up’
British and Irish Lions fly-half Finn Russell on his phone and legendary centre Brian O'Driscoll.
Brian O’Driscoll has backed Finn Russell but criticised the British and Irish Lions backroom team after their dressing room scenes stirred debate.
After lightning had suspended the third Test in Sydney on Saturday, both the Wallabies and the tourists headed back inside as the storm passed over.
Cameras then showed a typically relaxed Russell looking at his phone before the fly-half saw it being pointed at him and smiled.
Lions cover up the camera
Lions general manager David Nucifora then used a towel to cover up the camera, leading to criticism on social media.
There has also been a debate as to whether it is acceptable for a player to stare at their phone in the midst of a Test match, even if the game had been stopped.
However, O’Driscoll has leapt to the defence of Russell, but was less impressed by the actions of Nucifora, who was the Irish Rugby Football Union’s high performance director between 2014 and 2024.
“I’ve seen different people talking about it. It’s in the contract that those cameras are allowed in the dressing room, so what’s the point in covering up?” he told Off The Ball.
“Finn catches himself. I don’t know whether he’s looking at the Sky feed on his phone, and it’s like he looks up at the camera and smiles at it.
“He has license to do whatever he wants, Finn just does things his own way and that’s grand. It’s a very personal thing as to how you’re going to manage that time. It’s a very unusual situation you find yourself in.
“The last thing you want to do is burn nervous energy for half an hour. It’s about reducing your heart rate and then having the capacity to go again.”
While Nucifora covered one camera up, there was another situated in a different room, which showed Lions players sitting down on beanbags waiting for the match to resume.
How other Lions players dealt with the break
“Seeing the lads down in beanbags and doing their own thing, that’s completely their prerogative,” O’Driscoll said.
“Australia were better in the first half and then they were better in the second half too, so it wasn’t like it was this big shift because of the lightning break.
“That preparation and that downtime is a very personal thing. Certainly, as an older player, if I was 34, the last thing I would want to be doing is being constantly on a bike.
“I will conserve my energy, thanks, and I would back myself to get it right when I get out there for the proper warm-up in advance of the restart of the game.
“I wouldn’t buy into one team getting it right and the other getting it wrong.”
O’Driscoll ultimately felt that ‘not enough had been made’ of the unique scenario which disrupted the final Lions Test at the weekend.
“How nuts is it that this happened? No one’s ever encountered this before,” he said. “The lights went off at Rodney Parade in Newport once in a European game in the early 2000s, and we were back in the dressing room for 15 or 20 minutes while the engineers went to work.
“They then came back on, and off we went back out again. I’ve never heard of lightning stopping a game.”
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