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While this weekend's Six Nations match against Italy is crucial as Ireland try to secure the championship, it has been overshadowed by the fact that it will be Brian O'Driscoll's final home game in the green shirt.

It is certainly the end of an era and tonight Keith Wood and Gerry Thornley joined us to look ahead to that match and the latter gave his take on Eddie O'Sullivan's assertion that O'Driscoll is the greatest player of all time. 

"It's hard to quantify or evaluate in the context of the global game. I wouldn't disagree with Eddie about it. Unfortunately Brian's baggage is that he wore the green of Ireland and Ireland never made a World Cup semi-final sadly in his four attempts. For what it's worth, not only is he the greatest Irish player of all time but you can back it up," said Gerry citing the fact that BOD will become the most capped Irish player, record try scorer and captained Ireland 82 times and is still this country's most potent carrier.

Keith was the man who informed O'Driscoll that he would be his successor as Ireland captain in 2002 and reminisced about his memories of the 35-year-old. 

"It was one of those funny conversations where you go 'listen, I'm coming to an end, would you like to take over?' 'Yes I'd like to take over'. It's funny when you look back at it. He was young. He was 22, 23 at that stage and you look at it and you say we'll see the guy who should be captain. Course he was. He had it even then. A different sort of captain but there was a sense of leadership in the manner which he turned up at training which most fans will never have seen. For me, it was the attention to detail, the wailing of anger at himself when he dropped a ball. It was like the end of the world if he dropped the ball. It was a huge drive for perfection and a huge sense of fun, which is something we don't talk about a lot."    

Keith and Gerry also previewed the Italy match, with Gerry stating that the extent of the scoreline could have a "massive bearing" on the destination of the championship.

Both Keith and Gerry hope to see Simon Zebo involved either from the start or from the bench, while Keith wants Ian Madigan to get more game-time at Leinster as there is a "gap" after Jonathan Sexton at No 10.

Gerry also believes there is no chance of the IRFU buying out Sexton's Racing Metro contract and bringing him home, because it makes little commercial sense for any of the parties.

The lads also gave their predictions for the matches involving England, Wales, France and Scotland this weekend.