Lions 2013: dropping of Brian O'Driscoll hands Australia series, says Wallabies legend David Campese

The 34-year-old Irish centre has never before been excluded when fit in his 14-year professional career, and is now a veteran of four Lions tours.

Warren Gatland has made the biggest call of his career in dropping O'Driscoll - who has not even made the bench - and former Wallabies winger Campese, whose mistake caused series defeat to the Lions in 1989, believes that the tourists have no match winner in their XV for the game at the ANZ Stadium in Sydney.

He wrote: "Lions team info. Sorry but you have just handed to series to Australia. 7 chances and still no real match winner."

The 50-year-old knows what it takes to win and lose a Test series against the Lions, after his calamity in the final Test in 1989.

But his views have been echoed around the world, in the northern and southern hemisphere. For many, O'Driscoll was the captain elect in the absence of injured Sam Warburton, and now Welsh lock Alun-Wyn Jones will lead the side.

All Black Dan Carter, the world's best fly-half, said that BoD should have skippered the Lions this weekend, and wrote: "There must be some angry Irish out there waking up to see @BrianODriscoll not playing this weekend. #ShouldBeTheCaptain."

Telegraph Sport columnists Brian Moore and Will Greenwood, both former Lions, were similarly shocked. "BoD not even being on the bench is a strange call," wrote ex-hooker Moore, while World Cup winner Greenwood said: "Incredible range of opinions re Selection ... Gatland will do his own explaining but 'Ballsy' re Bod is an understatement."

O'Driscoll himself told his 327,000 Twitter fans that he was "gutted", but concentrating his efforts on helping the side win their first series in 16 years. He wrote: "Obviously totally gutted at being left out for deciding Test but all efforts go into preparing the boys to see it through. @seaofred"

In what could be his last game for Ireland, O'Driscoll was sin-binned for stamping against Italy in this spring's Six Nations. His side lost the game, and the centre has been penalised at the breakdown on a number of occasions during this Test series.

Perhaps Gatland thought he would be too much of a liability and was fearful that the occasion would get to him?

Mark Cueto, the former England winger and the Premiership's leading Test scorer, wrote, however, that Saturday's decider was "was made for him", while ex-red rose captain Will Carling said that his jaw "is still hanging open at Lions selection".

Not everyone agrees that O'Driscoll should play, however, and those who back Gatland say that sentiment should not come in to the decision. Owen Hathway wrote: "Thing is Gatland isn't picking whose better, Davies or BoD, he's picking whose better to play with Roberts and that's a no brainer."

And FrenchSlayer asked: "Am I the only one that's noticed BoD has been crap in both games... no room for sentiment, made silly mistakes with a vast experience."

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Warren Gatland's selection of 10 Welshmen in starting XV a brazen insult to very concept of British and Irish Lions

Why does Warren Gatland not just jettison Jonny Sexton for Neil Jenkins and have done with it?

It is also a brazen insult to the very concept of the Lions, intended to signify an unbreakable alliance of four home unions and two sovereign states but in reality more saturated in Welsh partisanship on this tour than if they were headquartered in Ebbw Vale.

Gatland might care to be reminded, in his hour of apparent panic and despite all his accomplishments in his last six years as Wales coach, that the pool of talent at his disposal for Saturday's showdown in Sydney extends beyond Offa's Dyke.

Forget this wearisome argument that "they are all Lions now" and that nationality is irrelevant even when the starting XV at the ANZ Stadium are two-thirds Welsh. This is, to all intents and purposes, Wales versus Australia, with a couple of sops thrown to Alex Corbisiero and Sean O'Brien as if they are afterthoughts, alien elements disturbing the giant gene pool from the Valleys.

Gatland's move suggests the very essence of 'bottling'. At the point of greatest pressure, with 16 years of pent-up frustration needing to be expiated in 80 minutes of thunderous rugby, he reverts to type. He trusts only in his boys, in the lieutenants whom he personally knows. He imagines he is back in the cauldron of the Millennium Stadium, the strains of 'Land of My Fathers' threatening to elicit some emotion from that inscrutable Kiwi facade.

So, here we go: Wales against Australia, Part Nine. Can somebody remind me how the previous eight turned out? Oh yes, eight defeats, with four in 2012 alone. What a perfect opportunity for Gatland to try to buck the trend, to subdue the Wallabies' gathering momentum, by naming the largest Welsh contingent in a starting line-up since 1950.

When I spoke to Australia coach Robbie Deans in March he predicted, correctly as it turned out, that the calls by Gatland, his fellow New Zealander, would pivot entirely upon Wales' decisive Six Nations victory over England, the teams' final international before Lions selection.

Granted, it was a trouncing. But on the basis of a single result is not a Lions team built. How easily we forget that this was the same Welsh side that lost to Ireland in their opening game and who, before George North went over for his tide-turning try in Paris, were deemed to be psychologically shot to pieces after eight Test losses on the spin.

The authors of that trauma were, to a large extent, Australia, who had cemented their stranglehold over Wales with Kurtley Beale's last-second try in Cardiff last December. Such memories are not simply expunged at a stroke. If Gatland's gamble backfires he is destined to be denigrated not just for making the wrong call, but for making it for all the wrong reasons.

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