19 APRIL 2015. Members of the rugby media are waiting in an Aviva Stadium press room for the launch of the Ireland men’s Sevens programme. Behind the scenes, there’s tension in the air.
Matthew D’Arcy is late due to a business meeting running over time. He arrives in time for some quick media training before joining Cian Aherne and Tom Daly for the main event. Moments before the players meet the media, a wary IRFU press officer pulls the group aside with some final instructions – mainly pointed at Aherne.
“Cian is Mr Sevens in Ireland and had been quite outspoken against the fact the IRFU hadn’t put a Sevens programme in place,” D’Arcy says. “So I remember him being told ‘Ok Cian, we’re just going to try put a positive message forward today on the Sevens programme.’”
Aherne laughs at the memory. “I remember being told ‘this is a positive story now lads, so we want you all to be talking about how great this is,’ rather than reflecting on the misgivings that had come the previous years.
“Sure all I wanted to do was be excited, it was just great to see it all finally kicking off.”
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Sevens rugby fell off the radar in Ireland in the early 2010s. After the men’s squad competed at the 2009 Sevens World Cup, the men’s programme stopped while the women’s squad continued to compete.
Aherne found that period incredibly frustrating. He was a member of the squad who qualified for the ’09 World Cup – where Ireland lost the third-tier Bowl final to Zimbabwe – and as the programme lay dormant, he pleaded with the Union to dust off the jump leads.
The calls fell on deaf ears until David Nucifora arrived as the IRFU’s High Performance Director in 2014. The Australian viewed Sevens as a valuable alternative pathway into 15s rugby, and also saw the clear potential in having an Irish team competing on the Olympic stage – with Sevens to be introduced as an Olympic sport for the first time at the Rio 2016 Games.
Men’s Sevens was coming back to Irish Rugby, but the early days of the programme’s re-launch would be a world away from the glamour and attention that awaits the squad in Paris this week.
As a starting point, the IRFU invited athletes to open trials as a wide-ranging talent search got underway.
“That combine invitation was like, ‘fuck, this is what I’ve been keeping myself in shape for, this is great!’ says Aherne.
“They were looking for rugby players, but any athletes really who felt Sevens might be for them. I went to the one in UL and it was like any rugby player in Limerick was showing up. It was quite unusual. I remember there being a couple of hurdlers and long distance runners showing up for the fitness tests, and we all did bleep tests and vertical jumps and sprint tests and all that kind of stuff.
It was funny watching a couple of lads who clearly had never played rugby before. And you know, you have that anxiety in the back of your mind going ‘Oh shit, maybe these guys are the missing link in rugby all this time?’
“I remember Jordan Conroy came along after the combine series. He wasn’t in the initial training programme, but they sourced him from the Midlands where they had known about this really fast guy. There were a few guys like that who probably wouldn’t have been identified if it hadn’t been for looking outside the box a bit.”
“I remember at those early sessions there was a couple of GAA bags being thrown on the floor in the changing rooms, and certainly accents that you wouldn’t necessarily hear (in rugby changing rooms),” says D’Arcy.
“I still think that’s one of the things limiting Irish rugby, the lack of diversity in it. Particularly with Sevens, the midfielders in GAA are the exact type of athletes you want, the people with the endurance engines. It’s the skill you can’t teach people, they need to have the V02 capacity and the outright speed.
“I think there’s still not enough of those people being attracted into rugby, and the same with athletes from diverse backgrounds . . . People who can bring unbelievable athletic abilities that we naturally don’t have.”
Up in Dublin, D’Arcy had first heard wind of the new programme from Leinster coach Hugh Hogan, who suggested it might be worth checking out.
“I think it was initially to do a fitness test out in Santry, which was very bleak,” says D’Arcy.
“It was turn up, run a yo-yo, do a counter movement jump and you were timed for your 0 -10m and 0-40m times. I think I was 29 at the time, so I was on the the wrong end of the scale versus some of the others that were involved.”
More than 300 athletes turned up for those early open sessions, with the IRFU then compiling a shortlist for a day of further trials in Lansdowne RFC. Tom Daly, Alex Wootton and Adam Byrne were among the hopefuls lacing up their boots, as well as a young player by the name of Tadhg Beirne who was struggling to make an impact at Leinster.
“They had mixed teams with a fair few academy players there as well,” says Aherne.
“It was a real mix of ex-pros, current academy lads and AIL guys. There was a couple of guys that came over from the UK as well, passport identified guys who none of us had ever met before, but were eligible through that route.”
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Within a matter of weeks, a 27-strong group who would become known as ‘The Originals’ were training in DCU, and things were ramping up. Anthony Eddy has been hired to lead the Sevens programme while Nucifora and Joe Schmidt both made appearances at training to underline the potential they saw in the Sevens pathway.
Some of those ‘Originals’ are still going strong, with Harry McNulty captaining the squad in Paris this week. It’s been quite the journey from the day McNulty’s mother spotted an IRFU ad looking for trialists.
“When we came in in 2015, in fairness to Ant [Eddy], he put ‘qualify for the Olympics’ as the first thing on the list of what this programme wanted to achieve,” says McNulty.
“Second after that was qualification for the World Series. At the time we wouldn’t have been able to qualify for the World Series for a couple of years because you had to go through the rankings, whereas we actually had the opportunity to qualify for Rio, technically, in the first year of the programme.”
It was ambitious talk, but, for much of the group, there was some uncertainty around where exactly the programme would go.
“When we were first starting off someone would say ‘Oh you play rugby, who do you play for?’” McNulty explains, “you’d say ‘the Sevens’ and they’d be like ‘Oh yeah, I was always wondering why Ireland never had a Sevens team’ or ‘We have a Sevens team, do we? I didn’t know that’.”
“My personal expectations were they’re probably half-heartedly looking to get this off the ground, maybe there was some downward pressure on them to get back involved in Sevens because it was becoming an Olympic thing,” adds D’Arcy.
I’m not sure they’re going to be fully brought into this, but jeez, you might get a few trips out of it or get back involved in a few more good rugby experiences and rugby days.
“But while the trial stage was a bit scattered, it became clear from pretty early days they were taking it seriously. Nucifora clearly believed. He was saying there’s only ever going to be four provinces, so we need another way of giving people an opportunity and he definitely saw the Sevens as that pathway.”
In those early days there was a basic feel to many of the sessions. Given most of the group had never played Sevens before, much of their time was focused on training the basics of the game, while also preparing the players for the sport’s gruelling physical demands.
“We were doing weekend camps that first year in DCU, but the worst memory I have was when they added some midweek training,” says D’Arcy.
“I remember turning up one evening after work at the back pitch of Lansdowne and it was straight in to do a yo-yo, and then a full training session afterwards. So for me it was a full day’s work, walk out dehydrated and not stretch to do a yo-yo and then into decision-making under fatigue.
“But that was the level and that’s what the body needed to be trained to be able to do in terms of the difference between Sevens and 15s. Anaerobically, you’re probably constantly at over 80% effort. They obviously knew that and that’s what they were trying to get the squad to be at.”
Getting fit was one thing. The skillset and tactical element proved equally challenging.
“We needed to learn to crawl before we could walk and walk before we could run,” says Aherne, the only member of the group who had been involved in the previous Sevens programme. “I remember it being quite basic, but also the rawness of it made it quite challenging.”
“I actually really enjoyed it,” says McNulty, “because comparing it to now, all the young lads that come in get thrown into the deep end and there’s a big learning curve straight away.
“Whereas day one when we came in it was literally ‘here’s how you defend at a ruck, here’s how the shape should look, where people should stand and where you should go’ so we actually walked through everything from the beginning.”
Aherne: “The rucking, it was quite cerebral where you were kind of going ‘ok’, so I can approach the ruck from that side if the ball comes in this way, but I can’t grab it if it’s in that position if the ball comes in the other way’, you know? Anthony Eddy had set up these rucking drills from several different angles so that we are all getting more familiar with the rules and situations that would come up on a Sevens pitch that wouldn’t come up on a 15s pitch with the amount of space that might be around the rucks.”
“It was tough going,” says D’Arcy. “It was different and the pressure on your skills, like I’ve never done more passing drills and I was a scrum-half. I can also clearly remember Anthony Eddy just hammering tackling – “I just want to see you at ankles! You have to just tackle ankles! Tackle low!
It was relearning a new sport, for sure, because every little detail of it is slightly different to 15s. I remember out in DCU doing how you defend the switch play. It was completely counterintuitive to how you did it in 15s.
“In 15s, if a switch happened before you and I was the inside player tracking my outside player, I pushed him out, he followed the ball-carrier and the guy switching was my guy. But in Sevens if they did a switch, the outside person still followed the ball-carrier, but it was the second guy in that took the switch play rather than the first guy because the other person needed to go to the far side of the ruck.
“All these little details that would go against your instinct of what you used to do in 15s was being re-trained into you. It was like a group of 25 or 30 guys being taught from scratch, for sure.”
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Before long the pieces began to fall into place and while Ireland were ready to compete, they’d have to play their way up the Sevens ladder. The first step on the road to qualifying for the Sevens World Series and Olympics saw Ireland head to Bosnia to play in a Rugby Europe Sevens Division C tournament.
Tom Daly captained the group that flew out to Zenica, a city football supporters will remember from a Robbie Brady goal scored in thick Bosnian fog later that year. While McNulty made the cut for Zenica, D’Arcy and Aherne were both left behind. After waiting so long to get another shot at the sport, Aherne was left with the disappointment of another Sevens setback. Or so he thought.
On the Thursday I got a phone call because one of the lads from England’s passport was out of date and they were like, look, we need someone at short notice to be able to go to Bosnia. I was like, ‘Count me in!’
“We got to go over to Bosnia and play against the likes of Iceland and Germany and Turkey, non-rugby playing nations, you’d think. We had Adam Byrne and Tom Daly and a few of the lads that are there now like Harry, and we just absolutely smashed every team.
“It was very, very easy going but it was such a weird rugby experience… At the end of the tournament they called out the 12 teams that were there from 12 to 1 and each team sang a song as they were being called out, like a national anthem or something like that.
“It got to us being named as the number one team, we started singing Ireland’s Call and the whole place just went crazy, so we’re jumping around in a big huddle with all the other teams, Icelandic lads and stuff.
“That’s Division C in Europe for you, but it was a great experience.”
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Ireland hope to be singing on a podium again this week, and they’ll take to the pitch in Paris with realistic medal ambitions.
Rio 2016 came too soon for the relaunched programme, and while the men scrapped into Tokyo 2020 – winning a repechage tournament a month before the Games kicked-off – a disappointing showing ended with Ireland losing a ninth/tenth place final against Kenya.
This time feels different. Ireland secured qualification for Paris last summer and their preparation has been promising. The season just gone saw the Ireland men place second on the SVNS overall standings, representing their best-ever campaign, although there’s a group of death look to Pool A – which sees Ireland face top seeds New Zealand tomorrow (3.30pm Irish time) after taking on South Africa (4.30pm) and Japan (8pm) today.
The Games will be Nucifora’s last act with the IRFU and for all the time and investment he’s poured into Sevens, nothing would grow the sport like a medal finish at the Stade de France.
“I hope it continues to get the investment and I hope it plays a part in diversifying rugby a bit more in Ireland and building rugby a bit more in Ireland,” says D’Arcy.
“But I’m just unbelievably proud of having been part of it and the journey. I’ll be shouting at my TV and I’ll be really hoping the guys can get a medal because it would really change the dial. There’s nothing like an Olympic medal.
“I know the 15s game is where the money is but it’s still 12 countries at best. It’s not global in terms of the eyes that are watching it. Whereas the Sevens . . . The likes of Kenya, Uruguay, Spain, China, Brazil’s involvement in the women’s side, it’s so much more global and the new eyes that will be on it, the pace of the game and how amazing those athletes are that are playing in it, the decision-making under fatigue, I can’t respect them more.”
“It’s been nothing but absolute excitement and joy watching them play,” adds Aherne.
“I just feel so happy for the likes of Mark Roche and Harry McNulty and Terry Kennedy, guys that have just been ploughing away, putting in the years of hard yards and now showing they are well able to compete and be one of the best teams there. It’s amazing to see how this year in particular, the standards have risen through the roof.
“I definitely felt like I was shouting about Sevens from the hilltops and that people could see, but until David Nucifora became involved in the IRFU, they just didn’t have an interest in it.
“It does feel like a real vindication of the vision.”
