Ireland's Men's Sevens team's form this season sparks hopes that they are good enough to be involved in the battle for Olympic medals
“Going in as well, we’re not going to be overwhelmed. We know what to expect. I’m there to compete now. We’ve all been to Paris before, we’ve played there, we’ve gone there on holiday. It’s not like we need to see the Eiffel Tower again. I’m not being smart, but that’s the way I’m looking at it.”
The top two teams from each of the three groups, plus the two best third-placed teams, progress to the quarter-finals, and a win there would leave Ireland just another win away from a medal. Having made Sevens history by beating New Zealand for the first time last December, then narrowly losing the Series final in June, they won’t fear their opening opponents, only respect them.
New Zealand lost the Tokyo final to Fiji, the back-to-back Olympic champions. They share Pool C with another of the medal favourites, host nation France, with a certain Antoine Dupont on board. “It was going to be a tough pool anyway,” Conroy says of Ireland’s opposition. “And we’ve taken a lot of confidence from playing these teams throughout the season, to know that we have the ability to win these games. And it comes under the who’s hungrier? So we’re literally just focusing on what we can do to win those games.
“When I think of us, we’ve obviously got three more years’ experience on top of the players we were back by then.”“He’s done pretty well in the short amount of time he’s been playing, and his confidence has been building and building.
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