From Europe's third tier to Sevens heaven: How Ireland rose to Olympics qualification

Harry McNulty. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

The sevens circuit has taken the Ireland men’s side to all manner of ports and parts but none stranger than Zenica in Bosnia where they took their first official steps on a road that has landed them in Tokyo.

Harry McNulty is the only player braced to face South Africa, Kenya, and the USA in their Olympic pool this next week who was part of the chorus when the men’s programme cleared its throat in eastern Europe six long years ago.

Gerry Kennedy and Foster Horan were members of the wider squad at the time but neither made it to this strangest of outposts. Neither did current captain Billy Dardis who signed on with the squad a few months into that campaign.

This was the third tier of the sevens circuit. Europe’s Division C. They were, to borrow Mark Renton’s phrase in Trainspotting, the “lowest of the low” and yet McNulty looks back on those innocent times with obvious joy and some wistfulness.

Tom Daly was captain and Adam Byrne and Alex Wootton were part of the travelling party too. So was David Nucifora, the IRFU’s director of rugby whose backing for the shorter form of the game was in stark contrast to the indifference it had always merited in Ireland.

They opened their account with routine wins over Turkey, Belarus, and Montenegro. None of them rugby strongholds. This is how it was. McNulty can remember the Austrian team belting out the Irish anthem and Iceland downing beers while immersed in a pool.

“Great craic and fantastic memories,” he laughs.

Team Ireland Rugby Sevens squad members Adam Leavy, Mark Roche, Ian Fitzpatrick and Foster Horan. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

How rough and ready was it? Very. Their hotel was so bad that the blazers swiftly found them new digs but no-one could do much about the blazing heat that made the Astro burn their feet through their boots at training. Or the swarms of flies.

The venue itself was a municipal facility of the type that comes with athletics track attached, the pitch was littered with divots where the hammer toss had left its mark and the posts only arrived shortly before the tournament started.

That said, at least one of the locals came prepared.

“Our liaison office was a staunch Irish rugby supporter and he rocked down with a Leinster jersey on and pulling up photos of a new-born in full Leinster jersey,” McNulty remembers. “Absolutely mad for it.”

The Irish were hardly in any position to get above their station. Their only exposure to sevens prior to this was the Super Sevens series in England where they would play invitational sides in some out-of-the-way town or other.

The opposition had names like Samurai and Apache but they were decent. The Irish boys would fly in on a Friday night, play half-a-dozen games the next day and fly out again. If they were lucky they got a night in a local hotel first.

It’s actually ridiculous how green they were and how far they’ve come.

McNulty had won an All-Ireland Sevens Cup in 2011 under Tony Smeeth – a rare sevens apostle - at Trinity. He played at the cherished Kinsale Sevens too. That aside, all he had by way of a manual was a few in-house IRFU trials before they hit the English circuit.

That left him better prepared than most for the game and coach Anthony Eddy spent the following seasons blooding more and more players while the side inched its way up the ranks from oblivion to an odd form of respectability.

The sevens squads, male and female, take in some of the most stunning cities in the world but they do it on salaries that would make an intern think twice and most of the men do it on the back of some sort of rejection from their provinces and the 15s game.

Brian O’Driscoll did a piece with the England sevens for one of his corporate partners before and it in mentioned the impossibility of any sevens side carrying deadweight. There is simply no place to hide on those pitches with such few numbers.

“The best way to sum it up is resilience,” says McNulty.

Being able to do just do what you love every day, whether it is going right or wrong for you. The best example, and a guy who doesn’t get a whole lot of credit, is Foster Horan.

“He was involved from day one but it took him two years to get his first cap because he went through so many injuries. He was selected a couple of times to get his first cap, something would happen to him during the week and he would have to pull out.

“For someone to go through two full years of training, rehab, all the background stuff that no-one ever sees and working so hard and getting his chance to get a cap… To me, that sums up the entirety of the whole programme.”