IN the days after his debut as Irish captain against Australia back in 2002, Brian O'Driscoll spoke about one of the dilemmas he had heading into the game. It may seem a touch trivial now, but the then 23-year-old was worried about whether he should walk down the line and introduce his team mates to President Mary McAleese, or whether instead he should let her stroll down on her own.

Keith Wood used both methods, leaving O'Driscoll a touch confused. "In the end I thought it was best to go with the option of introducing them, " he said in his newspaper diary. And as he did the introductions, his colleagues didn't spare him. "I'd a couple of smart comments along the line from the likes of Denis (Hickie), " said O'Driscoll, "him sort of saying to the President that I wasn't doing a bad job for my maiden captaincy."

If his debut in the protocol department was a touch nervous, then his performance in that area last week shows how far he's progressed over the tenure of has captaincy. At Croke Park he accompanied the President down the red carpet, a broad smile on his face as he introduced some players by their first names, others by their nicknames, much to the amusement of those standing either side of them. Before the emotion of the anthems, and during that utterly dull period between when a team comes onto the pitch and the conductor waves his baton to get the songs going, the captain played the moment beautifully, treating the President with the utmost respect, while at the same time helping his players to relax. It may only be a small thing, that difference in attitude on the red carpet, but it is symbolic of O'Driscoll's maturation over the years. The meekness of five years previous has totally vanished.

On Saturday next against Scotland, he'll captain Ireland for the 36th time, a tally that will see him share with Keith Wood the honour of captaining his country on the most occasions.

He's already bypassed the likes of Tom Kiernan, the wily Cork Constitution full-back, Ciaran Fitzgerald, the gritty hooker and Karl Mullen, the leader of Ireland's Grand Slam winning tribe of 1948. You could spend a lot of time arguing the merits of who's the greatest of them all, employing all sorts of methods from statistical to cerebral, whether the captain played in the professional or amateur era, but most fair minded people would be inclined to agree that at the very least, O'Driscoll is the collective equal of the legends listed above. And at 28, with a good three to four years left with the armband, and a record at this point in time of 26 wins from 35 games, he's well primed to raise himself to a different pantheon entirely.

If you were to allow rugby men from a different era to argue against the claims of O'Driscoll being the greatest Irish captain ever, one point they'd undoubtedly bring up is how the role has changed through the years. In the days of Mullen, and the first couple of years of Kiernan's era as skipper, the captain was not only a leader on the pitch during a game, he also took something close to full responsibility for tactics beforehand.

You'd imagine he also played a hand in ensuring that all his players were kept far enough away from temptation the night before an international. In contrast, the modern day captain's responsibilities centre around three areas: media stuff and other ceremonial duties, on-field decision making and squad motivation.

To the latter, first. From the very day Eddie O'Sullivan cleverly installed him as captain for that Australian game, O'Driscoll has been at pains to get across that he'd be a leader by deeds, not words. He'd seen the passion generated by the intoxicating words of captains like Martin Johnson and Wood - guys that could raise the temperature in a room by stringing the right words together - and doubted that he could mimic their act. "I think the real role of a captain is to talk when needs be, not to talk for the sake of it, " was one of his earlier comments in the job. He would also admit in those early days that the thought of speaking at the captain's meeting the day before a game scared him. Even now, things don't appear to have changed all that much. "I wasn't a natural-born leader, " he said last year. "I had to grow into it, and that probably took the most energy from me, just thinking that over. Even things like speeches, I get quite nervous about. It's something that doesn't come totally naturally to me. Some people are confident with that. I'm confident going out and playing rugby in front of how many people. That's just my make-up."

If O'Driscoll doesn't feel comfortable about expressing himself through words, he certainly works hard on improving himself. He puts an awful lot of time and effort into preparing his speech for the captain's meeting, preparing for it as meticulously as he would the game itself. What that also tells us is that it's the respect from his peers, his team mates, that is most important to him, and by corollary, his respect for them is total.

It's a pretty good trait for an international captain to hold. And anyway, motivation is not all about words. Last Saturday he stood at the entrance to the tunnel at half-time and clapped every single one of his players off the pitch. Deeds can speak much louder at times.

The interesting thing about O'Driscoll's nervousness in speaking publicly, or more specifically in front of his team mates, is that he appears to have no problem whatsoever in dealing with the media duties he has to perform, even though the sheer volume of them bothers him at times. Although understandably nervous when he sat at the top table facing us ghastly journalists on his first couple of occasions as captain, he eased into the role pretty quickly and is now as fluent and articulate as any player in the world game. When you transcribe what O'Driscoll has said after an average press conference, you don't have to cut out any "ohs", "ahs" and "mmms", nor do you have to alter words here and there to make his English look better.

He can be a journalist's dream at times, and according to those in the know, much of what he says comes off his own back, not from advisors or press officers.

The other noteworthy thing is how rarely his, often bold, pronouncements come back to slap him in the face. Take his comments the day before the Ireland and England game at Twickenham back in 2004, when he suggested he'd like to give "the prawn sandwich brigade something to choke on". No media Svengali on the planet would have advised such words the day before an international but O'Driscoll's statement set the tone for an incredibly brave Irish victory the following day.

On the field, away from all that media and speeches malarkey, his captaincy has evolved into something special. There have been question marks in the past about some of his on-field leadership, for example, the way he allowed Martin Johnson to stand on Ireland's side of the red carpet back in 2003, his inability to influence a referee like Lawrence Dallaglio or even the way he might not grab every single game by the scruff of its neck. But the fact of the matter is that these issues, and they may not be all that important, stem not from the man himself, but his position.

Forwards, who spend most of their time in and around the breakdown area, are more naturally disposed to bending an official's ear, while a barging run from a huge second-row is more of a natural adrenalin pumper than a nice line or a flicked pass from a centre. O'Driscoll can't be all things to all men but what he does have is a hugely consistent ability for making the right decisions for his team on the field. Rack your brains but you'll be lucky to come up with a handful of poor decisions O'Driscoll has made during his 35 games to date as captain. Take for example last Saturday's game against England, where Ireland took kicks at goal or went to the corners from their penalties in perfect proportion. He does undoubtedly put a high premium in the opinions of those around him - Paul O'Connell and Ronan O'Gara in particular - but the final decision is always his. You also sense that his coach has afforded him a fair degree more responsibility in that department over the past 18 months. It's certainly paid off.

We'll leave the last word to one of his deputies, O'Connell. "Brian is very good at being the type of captain who enjoys leading a team that has high expectations, " the Munster captain said recently. "He does it very well and it's been great for him."

With Ireland reaching for the stars, he appears to be the perfect man to lead them there.