Oh no, the New Zealand Herald have called Brian O’Driscoll ‘Britain’s Greatest Player’

When will foreign newspapers ever learn? The Daily Telegraph calling Katie Taylor ‘British’ was bad enough, but now the New Zealand Herald have labelled Brian O’Driscoll as ‘Britain’s Greatest Player’. Ugh.

As a nation, we like to think that in Ireland, we have a thick enough skin at the best of times.

Outsiders can slag off our economic woes and we’ll brush it off, they can indulge in blatant paddywhackery and use the most outdated stereotypes to describe us and we’ll let them away with it, but one thing we won’t tolerate is stealing our most talented sports stars and claiming them for Britain.

The Daily Telegraph did it for Katie Taylor at the Olympics last year and now the New Zealand Herald have got in on the act, with a sub-headline in a recent edition claiming that ‘Britain’s Greatest Player of his generation is having way too much fun to retire’.

Pic via @CiaranHorgan on Twitter

What’s worse is that the main headline in the piece refers to the great man as the ‘Irish prince of centres’ before it is contradicted immediately below, but no amount of inaccurate headlines are going to steal BOD away from us and we imagine once he hears about it, his reaction would be something similar to the picture at the top of the page.

For shame, New Zealand Herald, for shame.

Hat-tip to @CiaranHorgan on Twitter for the picture and WorldIrish.com for bringing this to our attention