Cited.

Former Ireland flanker Seán O’Brien says missing Ireland’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final clash against Argentina back in 2015 is the one thing he wishes went differently in his career.

O’Brien was handed a one-week ban ahead of that game after he was cited for a punch to the stomach on French lock Pascal Papé in the pool stages.

Ireland also lost the likes of Johnny Sexton, Paul O’Connell and Peter O’Mahony to injury in that game, leaving them without a number of key players for their last-eight clash with the Pumas.

The men in green then went on to lose that game 43-20, and to this day are still yet to win a World Cup quarter-final.

“Getting cited after the 2015 [World Cup] French game,” O’Brien said on this week’s episode of the Up and Under Podcast when asked about one thing he wished went differently in his career.

“That’s probably the biggest disappointment of my career, that week missing that Argentina game.”

Jamie Heaslip added that he couldn’t believe that Papé “hung” O’Brien out to dry considering a few months previous the number eight accepted the lock’s apology and say nothing bad about him in his report following a nasty knee to his back in the Six Nations that resulted in a 10-week ban.

“Every single bit of that citing is in the book [Fuel], Word for word,” O’Brien added.

“I actually recorded that whole citing. That’s quite an interesting part in the book actually because it goes through from the very minute I’m cited to the very end of it in a lot of detail.

“It was hellish for me but I done what I done and I suffered the consequences. But that day when the boys lost to Argentina and we were missing five probably key players.

“If we had one of us there I still think one of us would have got us over the line because we were a whisker away. We didn’t start well enough but we came back at them.

“It’s probably a big regret of mine, 100%, that day.”

You can listen to the full chat with me, Jamie and Seán on Episode 13 of the Up and Under Podcast.