IT HAS BEEN a whirlwind few years for Declan Halpin since he graduated from UL in 2009 with a degree in sports science but he has loved every second of it.
His degree in sports science has led him down the road of strength and conditioning and while a lot of people with his background end up giving advice down at the local gym, Halpin has ended up in Singapore working with their sevens rugby team.
Having attended Clongowes it is no surprise that Halpin is passionate about rugby and he got a chance to learn about strength and conditioning from one of the premier rugby academy’s in the world while in college.
“I did a great sports science course in UL and you actually get to go out and do work with a professional team,” Halpin said.
“I was sent to work with the Stormers in South Africa and I found that I really liked working with injured players so I decided to do a Masters in physiotherapy.”
After getting his masters Halpin decided to move abroad and looked at different English-speaking countries that would allow him to combine his passions of rugby and fitness.
He settled on Singapore.
“Rugby is surprisingly big in Singapore and a lot of schools play it,” Halpin said.
“There are a lot of ex-pats over here who play too and I joined a club when I arrived. I got to know the national coaches through playing and their sevens team needed a strength and conditioning coach.”
Halpin now finds himself as the man tasked with implementing a strength and conditioning program for the sevens team. He marvels at the opportunity to be able to work with a national team, mentioning that if he were back in Ireland it would take him a long time to reach the same level.
Sevens rugby is exploding a bit in Singapore and given the build of most of their players, they are more suited to it rather than the 15-man game.
“They have just gotten Standard Charter in as a sponsor and since sevens is an Olympic sport they have gotten some funding as well,” Halpin said.
“They focus on sevens because the players are pretty small and tend to get bullied by some of the bigger teams. They grow up playing a lot of touch rugby so their skills are very good, which is perfect for sevens.”
Given his training, Halpin is able to double job as both the S&C coach and the physio. He enjoys the work but it means long days in a tough climate.
“A day would start at 6.30 in the morning for a gym session with the team,” Halpin said.
“You aren’t going to turn these guys into massive 100 kilo players but I’m trying to train them a bit cleverer so they can be as powerful as possible without losing their speed. I work in a clinic during the day and then there is a pitch session in the evening and I’m there to help with any injuries. So you could be going from 6.30 in the morning to about 9.30 at night some days.”
The experience he has gotten in Singapore has made Halpin somewhat of a valuable commodity in Asia and soon he will travel to Indonesia to work with some of their Olympic athletes.
Halpin is delighted with how moving to Singapore has turned out and he has gotten a lot of opportunities to travel around the surrounding area.
And given how much experience he has gotten on his journey so far, he isn’t ready to return to Ireland just yet.
“Asia is the biggest area of growth for rugby in the World,” Halpin said.
“Singapore is set to join the World Sevens Tour in 2017 but they play on the Asian Tour at the moment. With the team, I’ve got to travel to Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Borneo and Darwin. I would like to work somewhere else in Asia before I got home.”
