FOLLOWING A WAIT of almost two years, the Ireland men’s sevens team will have their final shot at Olympic qualification in next weekend’s World Rugby Sevens Repechage in Monaco (19-20 June).
Originally set to take place 12 months ago, this tournament was ultimately postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, Ireland had earned a place at the Repechage by virtue of finishing third at a Rugby Europe Olympic qualifier at Colomiers in July 2019.
For a variety of reasons, the squad have only returned to competitive fare in recent weeks – the International Rugby 7s at St George’s Park, England in May and the inaugural HPC International 7s on home soil last weekend ending their year-long hiatus from the game. Nonetheless the IRFU’s Director of Sevens Rugby, Anthony Eddy, isn’t overly concerned about their lack of action heading into a crunch two-day event.
“The playing squad committed some time ago to coming back and preparing for all the tournaments that we thought we were going to have,” Eddy said.
“The last couple of tournaments – the UK one with Great Britain and the USA, and then the tournament that we just recently hosted ourselves [also against Great Britain] – have been extremely valuable for us.
Two teams that have already qualified for the Olympics. That has been great for us and has just been really good preparation. It would probably have been nice if we had a couple of other tournaments earlier in the season, but they weren’t to be. We played some internal games against each other as well. Considering everything, we’re as prepared as we can be.”
Having finally qualified for the World Series as a core nation in 2019, the next natural step on the ladder for the Ireland men’s sevens would be to reach the Olympic Games. In order to do so, they will have to progress as the outright winners of next weekend’s tournament.
With Zimbabwe, Mexico, Tonga and Samoa forming the opposition in Pool A, advancing to the semi-final of the Repechage will be a difficult task in itself and Eddy acknowledged there are quality sides to be found on the other side of the draw as well.
“Obviously France are going to be tough competition. We know how successful they’ve been in the World Series in recent years. We played Hong Kong in Hong Kong to qualify for the World Series and that’s not an easy game either. Those sorts of teams are always going to provide a different challenge.”
Of the 14 players Eddy has selected for this Repechage, Harry McNulty is one name that sticks out above all others. Whereas the rest of the squad are connected to All-Ireland League clubs, McNulty has been plying his trade in America’s Major League Rugby with LA Giltinis.
Thanks to an arrangement between the IRFU and the California-based club, the former Munster Academy star will be available to Eddy next weekend and for the Olympics in Tokyo if Ireland get that far.
“We approached him and we also approached the club in LA and they were happy to release Harry, which is fantastic and very nice of them to do. Not everybody gets an opportunity to represent their country and become an Olympian.
“It’s just something that the club looked on as being favourable for Harry. He has been released to us and hopefully he gets what he deserves, and that’s representing his country at the Olympics.”
Although next weekend’s squad contains a nucleus of players who have been in the Sevens programme for several years, a number have also moved away from the set-up in recent times and are currently thriving in the 15s game.
The likes of Hugo Keenan, Will Connors and Shane Daly were handed their senior international debuts by Andy Farrell in the past year, having previously featured under Eddy in the Sevens code.
“Every country has used Sevens to develop players for their 15s game for years and years and years. It’s great that on the back of our Sevens programme that we’re seeing some of the benefits of that,” Eddy added.
“To see the likes of Shane and Hugo, Will and Robert Baloucoune. Plenty of others as well that have come through the Sevens programme and are now represented in the 15s. There’ll be plenty more to come in the future too, I dare say.”
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