Harry McNulty: The Irish crowd in Paris, Keenan’s return, a nine-year odyssey

NO FUNNY BUSINESS: The Ireland Men's Rugby Sevens Squad, back row, from left, Jordan Conroy, Billy Dardis, Bryan Mollen, Chay Mullins, Zac Ward, Terry Kennedy and Mark Roche, with, front row, from left, Gavin Mullin, Andrew Smith, Hugo Lennox, Harry McNulty, Hugo Keenan, Niall Comerford and Sean Cribbin. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/ Sportsfile

By the start of July, there was 60,000 Olympic Games tickets sold to Ireland. That is the biggest variation from Tokyo. The official Paris slogan drives that point home: Ouvrons Grand les Jeux. Games wide open.

It starts with the Ireland men’s rugby sevens team who kick off their medal hunt on Wednesday with Pool A games against South Africa and Japan. 

This time it will be different in every sense, hopes captain Harry McNulty.

“The Village experience in Tokyo was probably better than expected because everyone was on the same page in terms of Covid, doing all the testing and all that kind of stuff and I think they gave out an image that it was going to be really, really strict but I think it was the right level,” he said.

“You didn’t feel like you were under the cosh all of the time. We were able to go into the food hall, there was a shop. But not having any of the fans there was the big loss when we were playing.” 

Their debut at the Olympics ended in bitter disappointment. This summer is expected to be the last European games until at least 2040. 

They are determined to make the most of it. James Topping’s outfit have also been boosted by the return of Hugo Keenan.

“He is a total professional. His attitude to the whole thing was that he wanted to learn, wanted to get stuck in and give everything that he could to the programme.

“He would always have that open mindset in terms of asking questions around whether what he was doing was right or wrong and he knew pretty much all of the calls by the time he came into the programme, so he was just showcasing that he is really just here to be a part of the team.” 

For 31-year-old McNulty, the journey to this point started in 2015 back in DCU. The Rio Olympics was always a longshot. They were notified of several tournaments by former Director of rugby sevens Anthony Eddy. Tokyo was the launch. 

Paris can yield the ultimate prize.

“When we did come in, in fairness to Ant, he did put ‘qualify for the Olympics’ as the first thing on the list of what this programme wanted to achieve and then, secondly after that, was the qualification for the World Series because, at the time, we wouldn’t have been able to qualify for the World Series for a couple of years, just because you had to go through the rankings, whereas we actually had the opportunity to qualify for Rio technically in the first year of the programme.

“I guess it was clear from the very onset but when you’ve just been released from an academy and you’re going into this programme that’s never really been around before from a structural point of view – Ireland had played Sevens before but realistically it was just guys brought in to play – you didn’t really know where it was going to go and what you could achieve.

“For me, it was just trying to go as far as possible with the team, whatever length of time I was going to be involved in the team and somehow I’m still here nine years later.”