Brian O'Driscoll in action against England © Getty Images

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Players/Officials: Brian O'Driscoll

Tournaments/Tours: British and Irish Lions tour | Six Nations

Teams: British and Irish Lions | Ireland

Brian O'Driscoll has admitted that his thoughts were elsewhere during their Six Nations loss to England due to the birth of his daughter on the morning of the match.

O'Driscoll was called at 8.30am by his wife on the day of the game and after she had given birth to their new daughter Sadie, he was back in the team hotel by midday. Ireland ended up losing the match 12-6 to England and while O'Driscoll started the game, he has revealed that he was not able to offer his usual high standard of leadership to the rest of the team.

"I don't even remember a lot of the game and I was in my own world for much of the time," O'Driscoll told the Telegraph. "It was the sort of match that needed a bit of leadership from me but which I wasn't quite able to deliver as I usually would have hoped to have done. It was all quite bizarre. I didn't make any great errors but I didn't add a huge amount either. It was a day of extremes.

"I was playing a game of that importance and yet, in an instant, my whole perspective had changed. This most wonderful thing had happened. Everything else paled into insignificance."

And O'Driscoll admits that the birth of his daughter has been a welcome distraction with Ireland currently on just one win out of three in this season's Six Nations. He added: "I would have thought a lot about rugby matters at this time of year. Now I don't have time to think about rugby at all. That's no bad thing, perhaps, with the results we've had over the last couple of weeks."

O'Driscoll will now hope to finish the season on a high with the British & Irish Lions tour coming up in the summer. He was a member of the Lions squad for their last three tours and looks set to be named in the party come April, but he is adamant that his place in the touring group is not set in stone.

"We need to win this one. I'd love to go but I take nothing for granted. We need to get ourselves sorted in Ireland, if we want to get the numbers on the trip that we might have hoped for."