The pain, both physical and emotional, has eased, but not disappeared."I still stand by my view that it was surprising nothing came of it," he said with a shake of the head. "Bad tackles should carry some sort of punishment, but that didn't quite happen.". I want to take a more objective approach to why we didn't succeed when I truly believed we had a good chance of being successful."One of the reasons for British Isles rugby's most humiliating failure in more than two decades was O'Driscoll's personal calamity, which saw him speared into the Christchurch turf in a reckless, possibly malicious, tackle by Tana Umaga, the All Blacks' captain, and Keven Mealamu, the hooker. "I have some comments to make on how I thought the tour went, but none of them will involve criticising my colleagues.

The Irishman was unwilling to put Henson's outburst entirely down to inexperience, suggesting that this ill-advised excursion into the publishing world was Henson's own way of "venting his frustrations"."I don't think you do yourself any favours by giving it out about team-mates in a book, rather than saying it to their face," said O'Driscoll, whose own literary offering - presumably more diplomatic - will be released at the end of the month. If you have a problem with someone, you sort it out with them person to person."O'Driscoll, still recovering from the shoulder injury he suffered in the opening seconds of the first Test and still a good six weeks away from resuming active duty for Leinster, was more than eager to sing from the Robinson hymnsheet. "With so many different characters involved, you aren't going to like everyone. But it's part of the teamship rules that you don't criticise other players.

But he also fired a few bullets in the direction of unnamed fellow players, and this was a step too far in the considered opinion of his august colleagues. "Sometimes, you have to bite your lip," said Robinson, the Sale full-back and two-time Lions tourist, who retired from international rugby last month. Henson, whose thoughts on the misfire in New Zealand are being serialised in the Sunday prints, aimed much of his criticism at Sir Clive Woodward, the head coach, and Alastair Campbell, the former Government spin doctor who spun himself into an unholy mess during his stint as the tour party's media consultant. The extravagantly coiffeured Wales centre copped it from all directions yesterday - not least from two respected international captains, Brian O'Driscoll and Jason Robinson - following his decision to lambast various elements of last summer's British and Irish Lions operation in a ghost-written book. The Ospreys will play their first Heineken Cup match at the new 20,000-capacity stadium in Swansea against Stade Fran?s on Sunday week, by which time Gavin Henson's ears may just have stopped burning. But his agent has revealed he has signed a two-year deal with the Bulls after failing to win an extension to his remaining year with the Giants..