Speedster Kennedy not in mood to hang around in bid to secure Olympic ticket
TEARING TERRY: Rugby 7's player Terry Kennedy poses for a portrait during the European Games team day for Team Ireland. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Melbourne is the one routinely nominated for the title of the world’s sporting capital but Terry Kennedy was still spoiled for choice when he stepped back from his sevens career and settled in for a residency in Sydney after last year’s sevens World Cup.
The city is awash with fare across all manner of team codes and individual pursuits but the only time the reigning world player of the year took in any form of contest was in January when he put the boots on for the New Zealand and Australian legs of the HSBC series.
There had been a loose plan to play a bit of XVs with Randwick but an injury nixed that. Otherwise, there was no temptation to go to an NRL rugby league game, or an Aussie Rules match, or to take in an A-League game with one of the area’s soccer franchises.
“It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that now,” he said, “because everyone asks that.”
His free time extended to other pursuits. He took in the Arctic Monkeys and The Kooks and some other gigs. There were jaunts to Melbourne, Byron Bay, the Gold Coast, Hunter Valley’s wine country and the Blue Mountains.
Most of all, though, he seemed to be working.
He’d already been doing a bit part-time with Triton Lake, the Irish sevens team’s sponsors, in the year before but his hiatus from rugby was spent helping the company to build their presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
He’d done commerce in UCD and that fed into the company’s role in what he terms the “private equities space” which involves lots of industry terms like raising capital, building investment networks and dealing with superannuation funds.
It was, he explained, a task that required he leave behind his comfort zone and that applied equally to the fact that, despite his years traversing the world with rugby, this was his first time actually living away from home.
“It was a great experience for me. It will stand to me.”
He eventually returned to the Ireland panel a few weeks before their tournament in the Algarve earlier this month and he rejoins a collective aiming to win their European Games tournament in Poland and claim the Olympic ticket that comes with it.
The event in Portugal served as the ideal dry run, for him and for the squad, in that it injected some match fitness into Kennedy and delivered two wins for the side over a GB team that should be their closest rival over three days at the Henryk Reyman Stadium.
More to the point, this is a player whose mental batteries have been recharged as they turn towards the knockout stages in Eastern Europe and, all going well, a final that will be played some time around 9pm Irish time tomorrow night.
A member of the sevens squad since its origins in 2016, Kennedy was part of the squad that qualified for Tokyo just three weeks before the Games started two years ago and then suffered the disappointment of flatlining in the Japanese capital.
Just making the Games proved to be their Olympics.
There is a burning determination among the panel not to leave it so late this time. Win outright in Poland and they can tailor their approach into Paris next year to suit themselves. Come up short and it will be a repeat of that draining, last-gasp bid in Monaco next year.
Nobody wants or needs that.
“We had a couple of long seasons after Covid when there were lots of doubts. We played that Monaco tournament and then the Olympics and we didn’t have a huge break after that before we were straight back in for another full season which was a longer season because we had the World Cup in September.
“So we didn’t have a proper summer break there. It’s kind of been two or three seasons for some lads without a prolonged break so it definitely can (be tough), depending on personal scenarios. I don’t think I could have taken a break and still been in Dublin.”
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