Women to make Olympics effort

The IRFU have announced the structures and pathway which they hope will take an Irish women’s team to the 2013 Rugby World Cup Sevens, and possibly the 2016 Olympics — but there will be no similar initiative in the men’s game.

A union spokesman confirmed there are two reasons for their continued refusal to give the green light to a serious stab at the men’s reduced format: finance and the lack of a confirmed qualifying process for the Games in Rio de Janeiro in four years’ time.

Of the two, finance is clearly the bigger bugbear.