The Ireland Women’s Sevens squad has realised their Olympic dream by securing the fourth and final automatic qualification berth through the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series with a pulsating 10-5 victory over Fiji at the France Sevens in Toulouse on Sunday morning.
Ireland’s fifth place finish in the World Series standings ensured that they will join Australia, New Zealand, USA in next summer’s Paris Olympics. France, as hosts, qualified automatically, and given that they finished fourth overall, it opened a spot for the fifth placed team, Ireland.
The Irish squad under new coach Allan Temple Jones – a word too for his predecessor Aiden McNulty – went into the Toulouse tournament with a 10-point lead in the standings over Fiji with GB also in the running to claim that final berth.
But with all three teams falling at the quarter-final stage on Saturday and GB dropping out of the race, it meant Ireland and Fiji went head-to-head in a Paris 2024 shoot-out at 8am on Sunday morning. A brace of tries from the outstanding Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe was enough to both secure a hard-fought victory and make history.
The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times
The bird-shaped obsession that drives James Crombie, one of Ireland’s best sports photographers
Former army baby Sam Prendergast not afraid to stand his ground in Ireland senior squad
No underestimating the Flying Fijians as they prepare to target Ireland’s vulnerabilities
An emotional Ireland captain Lucy Mulhall, who has been playing Sevens with Ireland for nine years, put the achievement in context. “I get shivers just thinking about it. It was like it was meant to be this way, to have our family here,” she said inreference to the significant Irish support in the stands.
Mulhall continued: “We have some random people who are not connected to any families come over and support us is amazing and young kids wearing Ireland Sevens jerseys just because they are Sevens fans is amazing.
“It [the achievement[ is very surreal, [the primary emotion] happiness, I guess. We obviously had a good start to the season and then had a bit of a blip in the last two tournaments. It was always going to come down to the wire but to come to a straight shootout against Fiji, it was amazing, really, really good. The game itself was up and down, but so relieved.”
The Irish captain paid tribute to the Irish defence in the second half and the work of Stacey Flood and Beibhinn Parsons on the last play to chase back and win a penalty turnover. She also pointed to the work done by a recent addition to the backroom team, sports psychologist Siobhan McArdle.
“It’s been a real running point. Siobhan McArdle has been so good capturing the idea of the team working together as bees, it has helped us to ‘be’ present as the pun would (go) but she has really worked on us being able to shake off all those external noises that might be around us of (when) we are lacking in confidence and (instead) be in the moment. It has brought us together.”
Ireland, who were beaten 14-0 by Japan later on Sunday to finish in sixth place, now have a year to prepare for Paris and their captain is well aware of the positive net effect it can have in growing the sport in Ireland. Mulhall explained: “It takes so long, and we put in so much work to get here, it is great to have a year to focus on performing really well at the Olympics.
“We are very aware that this will do a lot for growing Sevens in the country but what is even (better) would be [to win] an Olympic medal. It must be our next goal. We just want to grow the game of rugby for women in Ireland and show that there are loads of good news stories out there, plenty of them, and it is just great that we can add one and hopefully get some young girls to see, want and aspire to be playing for the country.
“It is an amazing sport and in Ireland I think it suits our DNA of just being the ‘fighting Irish.’ It’s nice to have some good news and hopefully we can inspire the next generation.”
