Ireland’s Olympic qualification caps exhilarating weekend of rugby action

The season that keeps on giving. On a landmark weekend, the Irish women’s Sevens yesterday secured the fourth and final automatic qualification berth for the Paris Olympics through the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.

Ultimately, their participation at the Olympic Games for the first time hinged on a last-day shoot-out in the final leg of the series in Toulouse against Fiji. Two Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe tries helped secure a hard-fought 10-5 victory and make history.

This completed a personal journey of nine years on the Sevens circuit for captain Lucy Mulhall, who described the achievement as “surreal”, adding: “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.”

The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times

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The squad now have a year to prepare for the Olympics, and it is anticipated that the Sevens players will become available for Ireland’s inaugural World XV Tier 3 campaign later this year.

Meanwhile, Munster have a welcome week’s respite before their URC final against the Stormers in Cape Town on Saturday week (kick-off 6.30pm local time/5.30pm Irish time) after their pulsating 16-15 win over Leinster at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

To put this second win in the last dozen meetings into further perspective, Leo Cullen’s side had won 25 matches in front of crowds at the Aviva dating back to the defeat by Toulon in 2015.

As their players thanked the sizeable Red Army contingent, several with kids in their arms, Graham Rowntree admitted: “I turned to a couple of coaches and said ‘is this happening?’ Yes, it is. The fans, families, they support us everywhere, so that was true emotion. But we don’t want it to end here. This can’t be our final.”

Munster will likely welcome back RG Snyman, Conor Murray, Malakai Fekitoa and Calvin Nash for the final, although Rowntree anticipated that the Stormers will be better than when Munster beat them 26-24 over four weeks ago following their 43-25 win over Connacht in Saturday’s earlier semi-final.

“They’ll be battle hardened themselves, so it will be a real challenge for us, but we’re in a final, we back the work we’ve done, we back our fitness. That will be our sixth away game on the bounce, it’s unprecedented, and we’ll enjoy it.”

Rowntree also hailed Peter O’Mahony for his leadership, and added: “He spoke emotionally after the game about what it means to him. You can see what it means to him, the way he conducts himself.

“He has led this group exceptionally in the last month. He came back from the Six Nations and didn’t have a break; he was straight down to the sauna in Durban with us and he’s pulling the group along with his performances. He’s a warrior, is Pete.”

Suddenly Leinster’s season comes down to next Saturday’s monumental Champions Cup final against La Rochelle, the team who have beaten them in the semi-finals and final over the last two seasons.

“There’s no point in us dwelling on anything now,” said Leo Cullen, struggling to hide his acute disappointment. “Credit to Munster, they fought till the very end and Jack Crowley knocks over a drop goal to win the game. For us now, there is one focus. Will that help us now? Yeah, maybe it will help us now. It’s an unbelievably exciting challenge. La Rochelle have been the form team in Europe, so it doesn’t get much bigger, does it?”

Ten of his likely starting team were rested against Munster, while James Lowe took part in the warm-up and is in line to recover from the groin injury he sustained in the quarter-final win over Leicester five weeks ago. Jimmy O’Brien’s withdrawal at half-time was “precautionary” while Rónan Kelleher, Josh van der Flier and Robbie Henshaw all had plenty of minutes on their return from injury.

Ronan O’Gara rested all bar Jonathan Danty and Levani Botia of his likely starting team next Saturday for La Rochelle’s 41-32 defeat in Montpellier, his side having already secured a top-two finish and a place in their domestic semi-finals.