WHEN IAN FITZPATRICK found out that Leinster weren’t going to be retaining him in 2018, he didn’t find the decision about what to do next in rugby very difficult.
He was already an Ireland 7s international at that point and dreams of reaching the Olympics in Tokyo had been formulating.
So the prospect of trying to get a contract over in the Championship didn’t hold huge appeal. Pitch up in some English town he had no links to, or keep playing with his friends and travelling to places like Hong Kong, Uruguay, and Chile? No choice to make really.
“You’re told around February or March time that you’re not getting kept on and then usually you’re either scrambling to find something else or deciding that’s it,” says Fitzpatrick.
“You have to see out your contract, you’re hanging around knowing you’re not going to be there next season, but I was lucky I wasn’t in that situation.”
Fitzpatrick’s decision to stay with the Ireland 7s team has paid off handsomely with their subsequent progress onto the World Series and their recent qualification for this month’s Olympic Games in Japan.
Fitzpatrick is one of the Irish 7s ‘originals,’ having been named in their first squad back in 2015 when the IRFU re-launched the men’s programme.
He remembers getting invited to the 7s trials at his club, Lansdowne, and says it would be comical to watch those early steps into 7s rugby given how little he and most of the others knew about the game.
“I hadn’t a clue about 7s. I had watched it on TV growing up but never really thought of it was something you could get into. It just wasn’t a thing in Ireland.
“Even when I got asked to come in from the academy, I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to be involved. Thankfully, I went for it. Not too many people can say they were there for the start of the journey and I’m glad I did it.”
Winning last month’s Olympics Qualifier in Monaco was the culmination of many years of hard work and sacrifice for Fitzpatrick and this group of 7s players.
Playing 7s rugby for Ireland is not a lucrative career option, with contracts worth €18,000 per season. Fitzpatrick and his team-mates train and live as full-time professional athletes but many of them have more going on in their lives.
His parents have always pushed the importance of study and Fitzpatrick took a degree in Commerce at UCD while he was in the Leinster academy. A few other courses later, he is now working part-time in a cybersecurity company called EdgeScan.
It means Fitzpatrick spends his mornings training flat-out with the 7s in preparation for the Olympics and is then at his desk at 2pm to work his other job for the evening. It sounds hectic but the Meath man isn’t complaining.
“Having that external stimulus outside rugby has been great because it’s not the be-all-and-end-all,” he explains.
“If you have a bad day’s training, you don’t take it home because you’re too busy working and trying to get things done. That has been invaluable for me.”
Fitzpatrick says he finds the work fascinating and gets on very well with his colleagues, making it much easier to get stuck in after rugby training. Happily, Fitzpatrick also loves going in to work with the 7s because they are such a tight-knit group.
Their bond has made it much easier to keep plugging away in recent years.
“There are sacrifices you make but with the squad we have, it’s just a group of mates playing rugby,” says Fitzpatrick, one of several Lansdowne men who have excelled in 7s. “It makes it so easy going in training and making sacrifices, not doing things your other friends are doing with their lives.
“At the moment, 7s is probably not an option as a long-term career but hopefully in the next couple of years, it’s something people can get into and have a real crack at.
“But I’m playing rugby with my friends and travelling the world, so I can’t have too many complaints.”
It’s not something Fitzpatrick imagined doing as a young fella from Ratoath in County Meath. His early sporting dreams involved running out at a packed Croke Park against the Dubs for an All-Ireland football final.
Fitzpatrick was a fine footballer and played with current Meath captain Shane McEntee, who got in touch after Ireland qualified for the Olympics to congratulate him. Rugby only came onto the radar when Fitzpatrick went to secondary school at King’s Hospital in Dublin, where rugby was mandatory.
Initially, he was sickened that rugby was eating into his football training time but soon Fitzpatrick was flying around with the oval ball, kitted out in headgear and rugby gloves. Eventually, he had to decide between playing Schools Senior Cup rugby or for the Meath minors and rugby won out.
Fitzpatrick credits several of his coaches in school as being key to him making a career out of it. Dan van Zyl, who now runs Rugby Academy Ireland, was a big influence, as were Matt Jarvis and Ray Mcllreavy.
King’s Hospital wasn’t known as a high-achieving rugby school but Fitzpatrick pushed on to Leinster representative honours and Ireland underage caps up to U20 level, earning his spot on the Leinster academy.
Naturally enough, he learned huge amounts during his time with Leinster and their decision to release him hurt at the time, but Fitzpatrick is thankful for how things have panned out.
“You come in and want to play for Leinster, head onto Ireland, but things didn’t work out for me with injuries and other things,” he says. “At the time when I was told I wasn’t getting kept on, I was very disappointed and it hit me quite hard but reflecting back now, I’m not too sure if I’d change it.
“Obviously, it would have been great to get a 15s career and kick on that way but I made some fantastic friends in my time in Leinster and now hopefully I get selected to go to the Olympics.
“There’s not too many rugby players in the world who can say that. I’ve had a great time since leaving Leinster.”
Fitzpatrick had a tough year with injury before making his return for last month’s Qualifier success in Monaco but says he finds it hard to see himself as unlucky even if he missed out on playing on the World Series.
“Injuries are part of the game. I don’t think my story is too different to a lot of people. My time in Leinster was a bit disjointed but you look at the news about Sean O’Brien and Stephen Fitzgerald having to retire from the game due to injury.
“I’ve played with those two guys – Stephen actually played 7s for a while – but really I’m quite fortunate. I’m still playing rugby and doing what I love.”
Fitzpatrick is excited about the prospect of getting over to Tokyo, even if it will be different in this pandemic era, and also about the reception the Ireland 7s team have received since qualifying.
Yesterday, they were at the Aviva Stadium and got a resounding round of applause at half of Ireland’s win against Japan. Their qualification has captured major attention for 7s and this month’s Games should see that move to another level.
He hopes to see plenty of new players flocking to 7s in years to come.
“The game itself is easy to pick up compared to a game of 15s where you need 30 players and set-piece specialists,” says Fitzpatrick. “I mean I’m in the scrum in 7s and if I was to go into a 15s scrum, I wouldn’t come out alive!
“People who hadn’t really heard of 7s before are now talking about it, which is fantastic. At the start, the fanbase was probably just a few 100 friends and family. You look on Twitter now and it’s gone absolutely mad.”
– First published 10.00, 4 July. This article was updated at 11.08am to correct two typos in the sixth and seventh paragraphs.
