The last thing Harry McNulty could have imagined when the call first came through nine years ago was that some day he would captain an Ireland team among the favourites to make the Olympic medal podium. Especially inside a sold-out Stade de France in Paris.
It’s a reflection not just of how far the men’s Rugby Sevens programme has come since first set up here in 2015, but also of McNulty’s persistence and consistency as the 31-year-old will be among seven of the 12 squad members now set to play in their second Olympics.
Back in 2015, the sport was still a year out from making its Olympic debut in Rio. By the time the delayed Tokyo Games rolled around, in 2021, the Ireland men’s team were the last to qualify, and ended up placing 10th of the 12 teams.
Things are different this time, and progressing to the quarter-finals is the least of their ambition going into Wednesday’s opening Group A games against South Africa (4.30 Irish time) and Japan (8.0), following on Thursday evening by their final group game against New Zealand (3.30) and then that potential quarter-final. This being before the Games officially begin, down along the Seine on Friday evening, and for McNulty that suits just fine.
“I prefer it,” he says. “Some sports are at the end, so you’re waiting around, and you can kind of maybe get lost in the whole Olympics as it is. Whereas we literally come in, nothing’s started, and we’re the first sport done out of everything.”
Back in 2015, McNulty was coming off two seasons with the Munster academy, and by his own admission had no clue how far the Sevens game would take him.
“We were in DCU for our first training camp, and I remember Anthony Eddy was there [the first director of Rugby Sevens in Ireland]. 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.
“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.
“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 you didn’t really know where it was going to go and what you could achieve. So, for me it was just trying to get as far as possible with the team, whatever length of time I was going to be involved. And somehow I’m still here nine years later.”
The top two teams from each of the three groups plus the two best third-placed teams progress to the quarter-finals, and a win there would leave Ireland just another win away from a medal.
The team’s prominent forward, McNulty took over the Irish captaincy for last year’s Dubai leg of the Sevens Series (replacing Billy Dardis, who misses Paris through injury), and since then they’ve beaten every team that qualified for Paris, including New Zealand, for the first time, last December.
“We’ve had some good successes. We had the really good World Cup, recently in Cape Town, coming third, and it’s just an accumulation of things which can hopefully all add up.
“There were quite a lot of tough pools throughout the season anyway so that kind of helps. It’s kind of been hard the whole way through; we had to fight a lot in those pool games. Every team can beat every team, so you just have to make sure you’re on when it counts.
New Zealand lost the Tokyo final to Fiji, the back-to-back Olympic champions. Fiji are in Group C with another of the medal favourites, host nation France, with a certain Antoine Dupont on board.
Ireland also have a certain Hugo Keenan, the Leinster and Ireland fullback, returning to the Sevens programme in May, having previously played a role in their Tokyo qualification.
“He’s a total professional,” says McNulty. “As captain of the team, if anyone is coming in, that’s what you really look for in a player, someone who’s looking to add as much as they can. Even if, say, he didn’t get a call to play in the Olympics, that he would come in with the right mindset but obviously he has got that call so that’s a great benefit to the whole thing.”
Along with McNulty, Terry Kennedy, Jordan Conroy, Hugo Lennox, Jack Kelly, Gavin Mullin, and Mark Roche also return from Tokyo, and that sort of experience might be pivotal to their medal chances.
At some point Fiji may well be standing in their way. “When Ireland play Fiji it’s really being as precise in our own game plan as we possibly can,” says McNulty. “Fiji just have this knack about them, where they kind of make you start trying to play like them sometimes. Every time we’ve beaten Fiji we were just on to everything we were about, and the style we want to play. That’s kind of how I see it, just stick to the system we’ve learned.”
