In 2015, the IRFU relaunched their men’s 7s programme with the aim of one day claiming Olympic glory.
Ciarán Kennedy 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.
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.********* 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.
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.
Advertisement 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.“It was a real mix of ex-pros, current academy lads and AIL guys.
“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’.” “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.
Anthony Eddy and David Nucifora at the Sevens launch in 2015. Dan Sheridan / INPHO Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO 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.
“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.
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