For many years, politics within the IRFU kept Ireland from participating in the global Sevens programme. In 2009, the excitement surrounding Sevens reached fever pitch when the game was accepted into the Olympics. Yet Ireland remained steadfast in refusing to participate until 2014.
During that period, the IRFU’s stance astounded me and many others in Irish rugby.
[ IRFU to axe men’s sevens programme following review ]
I became part of a loose coalition of former players, coaches and administrators who publicly and privately agitated for Ireland to enter both men’s and women’s squads into the World Sevens.
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The IRFU’s public stance against joining the World Sevens circuit was because of financial restraints. Sound familiar?
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However, we were informed via back channels that the real reason was highly political, as theoretically an Ireland Sevens player from Northern Ireland could declare for the Great British team before the Olympics.
At the Olympic Games, the IRFU is not the governing body, it is the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
The astounding strength of Irish rugby’s alliance between North and South that has stood firm against the most arduous of political tests rightly remains sacrosanct within the IRFU.
The feedback that reached our group‘s frustrated ears was that Ireland was refusing to join the World Sevens because the IRFU was being ultra-cautious to avoid even the slightest possibility of ever having to face the problem of a player leaving an Irish team to join a Great British Olympic team.
Many plausible solutions were put to the IRFU on their hypothetical problem. The most simple of the proposals was the creation of a watertight contract for Sevens players to declare for Ireland before playing a game.
Multiple unofficial communications were held over tea, coffee or pints with supportive members of the special committee who were tasked with looking at the possibility of Ireland joining the World Sevens circuit. Still, for several years, the IRFU rejected all proposals. As a result, it was not until 2019 that Ireland’s men’s team finally qualified for the World Sevens programme.
In all my many experiences with the IRFU administrators, they have got the vast majority of their big decisions absolutely right.
We only have to look across the water at the financial shambles and the high-performance train crashes that are happening at various levels of the game in England, Scotland and Wales to see that the path the IRFU administrators have trodden has Irish rugby financially secure and performing on the field far above almost every other union on the planet.
However, on the matter of the Irish men’s Sevens programme, the long years of delay before the IRFU finally gave it the green light denied generations the opportunity to compete on the global and Olympic stage. That long delay remains a deeply flawed decision by the IRFU.
There is a sentence that every union on the planet has in their constitution that states one of their core responsibilities is “to grow and foster the game of rugby”.
It does not say to grow and foster only the 15s version of the game. Sevens is a unique and integral part of rugby’s history.
Like all sports, rugby is in a state of constant change, and Sevens has evolved at an astonishing speed. It is now a unique hybrid game that stands almost totally divorced from the men’s 15-a-side game.
Public statements from the IRFU that the men’s World Sevens and Olympic programmes can only be viewed as a vehicle to produce players for the 15s game is out of touch with reality.
Sevens Rugby is a singularly elite sport. It is not a step along the path of a player’s developmental process to play 15s. The IRFU are wrong to compare international sevens with provincial academies.
The crucial aspect in Sevens evolution is that it has opened up rugby to a different calibre of athlete who has natural rugby skills and buckets of aerobic and anaerobic fitness.
While Sevens players are exceptionally athletic, you don’t have to be a bulging genetic mammoth performing as a battering ram in a mindless 7-1 bench to play Sevens rugby.
Those who watched the Paris Olympics Sevens tournament were captivated by the exceptional skill, athleticism and courage that was on display.
This was not a developmental tournament for 15s. It was elite sporting entertainment in which Ireland’s men’s and women’s teams were wonderful contributors.
The decision to abandon the men’s Irish Sevens programme has broken the hearts and shattered the dreams of generations of players.
As children, we started to play the game because we hoped that one day we could be like our heroes. I wonder how many little boys and girls watched the Olympic Sevens tournament in Paris and said to themselves: “One day I am going to do that.”
One of the IRFU’s most sacred responsibilities is to ensure there will always be the opportunity for the dreams of our young rugby boys and girls to come true.
That our young men can no longer dream of playing for Ireland at an Olympic Games because the IRFU says they cannot afford men’s Sevens borders on the shameful.
While budgets are real, savings should have been made in other areas to ensure that Ireland’s men will continue to represent the nation at world sport’s greatest event, the Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, rugby minnows such as Kenya, Uruguay and Spain must be selling raffle tickets to raise money, because they are capable of sending their men’s teams on the Sevens circuit. This makes the IRFU decision appear even more farcical.
It has taken over a decade for Irish rugby to develop the pathways and infrastructure that now empowers our superb men’s and women’s Sevens athletes to compete on equal terms with the world’s best.
For the IRFU to abandon that generation of work, which has created the men’s Sevens programme, is to walk away from a huge part of rugby’s future. This decision is rightly being seen by many in the rugby community as a dereliction of duty by their governing body.
History is a ruthless editor and the IRFU’s chapter on men’s Sevens makes for some ugly reading.
