The best Irish XV of the O’Driscoll years, as voted for by JOE readers

This team of Irish legends would certainly take some beating.

Conor Heneghan

The best Irish XV of the O’Driscoll years, as voted for by JOE readers

This team of Irish legends would certainly take some beating.

Ahead of Brian O’Driscoll’s final game for Ireland in Paris on Saturday – which will hopefully result in him celebrating his second Six Nations title – we have been exploring various different methods of paying tribute to the great man before he hangs up his boots.

Today, we came up with the idea of selecting an Irish dream team made up of the best players O’Driscoll has played with over the years and rather than do it ourselves and come in for criticism from the far more knowledgeable rugby folk out there, we decided to let our readers do it for us.

We asked our readers to tweet us in their best teams under the hashtag #MyBODXV yesterday and the response was far more overwhelming than we had expected.

Having been inundated with responses, a small minority of which were not entirely serious (Kudos to the many of you, for example, who selected Gary Breen in every position), a team started to take shape that is a pretty accurate reflection of the best players to have represented Ireland in their various positions from 1999 to 2014, which covers the remarkable duration of BOD’s international career.

dricoteam

Going on the votes at least, a lot of positions picked themselves and the second and back rows were by far the most competitive, with Malcolm O’Kelly and Stephen Ferris in particular missing out by just a whisker.

Although it was you, the JOE readers, who voted for the team, you can feel free to vent your opinions in the comment box below, but we think it’s a team that would take some beating and a team that the great man himself would be proud to be a part of.