Brian O’Driscoll reveals how he was injured on dancefloor of Copper Face Jacks after Champions Cup win

The rugby star has been a long-term ambassador for Temple Street Children’s Hospital and appeared on the Late Late Show alongside Michaela Morley, who received a kidney transplant in 2011.

The pair met in the aftermath of Leinster’s iconic European Cup win, when the team visited the hospital following the win, where Michaela, then aged six, was receiving dialysis treatment as she was awaiting a kidney transplant.

"Trophy lifting was relatively new to us at that time so we had a lot of celebration catching up to do from the disappointments of the early years,” he said.

The sportsman was pictured on his visit to Temple Street with a cut underneath his right eye, which he suffered during the match and which became more pronounced after celebrations in Dublin nightclub Copper Face Jacks.

"The trophy was being thrown around the dancefloor, it got lobbed over in my direction and I had bad hands and it whacked me and opened my cut up again. Little trickle of blood and then a quick glance over – ‘Wahey!’ – and away we went again.”

O’Driscoll, a long-term ambassador for the Children’s Health Ireland, has maintained his friendship with Michaela, who is set to complete her Leaving Cert this year.

Offering his own advice to students facing exams, the rugby star admitted he got the “wrong” Leaving Cert results at first and was handed those of a fellow student whose name was similar to his.

"Let me just say, the results weren’t what I anticipated. It was a rare opportunity to curse in front of my mother that I was going to be repeating and then I realised as I was looking through the subjects that I didn’t recognise that subject – ‘These aren’t mine.’

"The problem was when I got my own results it look like I was going to be doing actuary or something, they looked so phenomenal in comparison. But then, in reality, they still weren’t that great.”

He discussed the importance of organ donation, adding that he has had the difficult conversation with his wife that “if the unthinkable happens, you are offering life to other people”.

"It’s an unthinkable thought at times, particularly as a parent, but I’m sitting beside living proof of success stories.”