Advertisement League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Jordan Conroy at the Perth Sevens earlier this year.Travis Hayto/INPHO Troubling times for Ireland 7s as concerns about its future grow The IRFU has been reviewing whether the men’s programme is sustainable. 8.01pm, 15 Apr 2025 Share options ANYONE WHO WATCHED the Olympic Sevens in Paris last summer could have been forgiven for thinking it would be the launchpad for an elevated new era in the seven-player version of rugby. With the great Antoine Dupont leading the French men to gold medals in front of the rapturous home crowd and New Zealand winning a brilliant women’s competition, the atmosphere was phenomenal at all games in the packed-out Stade de France. But from that almighty high, sevens has fallen off the radar once again. The troubling state of the sport is reflected here in Ireland. It is no exaggeration to say that the IRFU’s men’s sevens programme is hanging in the balance right now. In January, the New Zealand Herald reported that World Rugby has lost up to €25 million since centralising the World Sevens Series – now rebranded as SVNS – in 2023. This season’s SVNS series has struggled to attract much interest despite the Olympics buzz last year. Even selling broadcasting rights to TV has proven difficult for World Rugby. The governing body’s critics point to perceived missteps in managing sevens, such as taking the series to cities where there is no rugby tradition and the costs associated with taking teams and staff to far-flung places. The brutal reality is that sevens is a hard sell. World Rugby aren’t the only organisation losing money on it. The IRFU’s most recent accounts show that the union spent €4.2 million on sevens in the 2023/24 season, the latest annual increase. Given that it’s an Olympic sport, sevens brings in additional funding from Sport Ireland, as well as from World Rugby, but it’s not generating revenue through the rugby itself. “It’s loss-making for us,” said IRFU CEO Kevin Potts last November. “The sevens model globally isn’t working. World Rugby have acknowledged that and they are in the middle of a review of the whole sevens model with a view to making recommendations for 2025/26 onwards. “It’s costing a lot of money. It does need to be addressed.” By way of comparison, the IRFU spent €3.7 million to run the provincial academies in Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connacht last season. The academies don’t bring in revenues directly but they do feed players into the professional 15s game every year. And all of this comes at a time when the IRFU is seemingly more concerned than ever about tightening its belt. Just today, the union announced it is launching an “organisational efficiency review” to ensure that “every Euro is working as hard as it can to support the game and deliver on our strategic ambitions.” David Nucifora was the key figure in relaunching the men's programme.Dan Sheridan / INPHO Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO Ireland have endured a miserable season in the 2024/25 SVNS series, with both the men’s and women’s teams set to feature in relegation play-offs in the final leg in Los Angeles early next month. Relegation would mean dropping down to the World Rugby Challenger Series next season. More troubling is the possibility that relegation could spell the end of the IRFU’s men’s sevens programme. Advertisement Even if Ireland stay up, it’s still possible that the IRFU could pull the plug. David Nucifora was the key figure in driving sevens rugby to new heights after taking over as the IRFU’s performance director in 2014. He believed that sevens could be a valuable player development tool for men’s and women’s 15s rugby, as well as a standalone product that Irish rugby fans would come to embrace. The men’s programme had been dormant since 2009, but Nucifora and the IRFU relaunched it in 2015. Ireland restarted down in Division C of the Rugby Europe Championship against the likes of Belarus and Montenegro. The men’s team rose all the way to Olympic qualification in 2020 and 2024, although they finished 10th first time around and then 6th last year when they had medal ambitions. It was an impressive journey but the wider rugby public in Ireland never quite connected full-time with that team. David Humphreys, who succeeded Nucifora last year, must now decide if the union wants to continue spending millions of euros each season on sevens. The former Ulster and Ireland out-half has no obvious background in sevens. He attended a few of the SVNS series legs earlier this season and couldn’t have been massively impressed. Some of those legs have been played out in front of small crowds. There was poor attendance in Singapore two weekends ago again. “From our point of view, there is no doubt that we are very much a 15s nation,” said Humphreys in February when asked about the status of the sevens programme. “Our priority will always be men’s and women’s 15s teams.” He confirmed that the sevens branch of the IRFU was under “ongoing review.” Humphreys and the IRFU are clearly unsure whether the investment is worth a couple of big peaks every few years. At a performance level, Humphreys must decide whether the men’s sevens programme is contributing to Irish rugby success. There have been success stories in terms of players who were with the sevens squad and kicked on in the 15s game. Hugo Keenan has been the poster boy in this regard. He regularly cites his time sevens as key to developing the core skills that have helped make him a success with Leinster and Andy Farrell’s Ireland. Ireland celebrate Olympic qualification.Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO Zac Ward is a more recent example. He wasn’t an underage star as a back row in 15s rugby and the pro game appeared to have passed him by. He was plucked from Ballynahinch RFC to become a key figure for the Ireland sevens side. Ward was brilliant in Paris last year and earned a 15s contract as a wing with Ulster. He has since played for Emerging Ireland and signed a new three-year deal with his province. Other 15s internationals like Shane Daly and Jimmy O’Brien impressed for the sevens team during their journeys, although it’s impossible to say how central a role the seven-player code had in their development. Indeed, some players who spent time in the sevens programme became frustrated at missing out on potential chances in the professional 15s game. The IRFU has seemingly been asking whether players like Ward are the exception rather than the rule, as well as if they’re coming through in enough volume to justify Nucifora’s theory that sevens can produce players for 15s. The Irish men lost the bulk of their squad after last year’s Olympics. Long-serving stalwarts who had driven the team from its rebirth in 2015 retired after years of service for relatively little financial gain. Sevens contracts in Ireland have never been lucrative, but the likes of Harry McNulty, Terry Kennedy, and Billy Dardis [who was left out of the Olympics] helped to make the team competitive on the world stage. Jack Kelly and Gavin Mullin also stepped away, while Andrew Smith and Chay Mullins refocused on 15s rugby with Connacht and Ward, a real star in Paris, earned a contract with Ulster. Experienced players like Mark Roche, Jordan Conroy, Bryan Mollen, and Hugo Lennox stayed on, yet the bulk of the core group was gone. In their place, younger and far less experienced players have done their best to step up, but Ireland have struggled. Seventh-place finishes at the two most recent legs in Hong Kong and Singapore have been their best efforts. The women’s team started this season with a sixth-place finish in Dubai, but have struggled hugely since then. As in the men’s competition, The Ireland women sit 11th of the 12 teams and will face the relegation play-offs in Los Angeles. The women’s programme appears to be more secure, though, given that the IRFU’s model for women’s rugby is to contract players who can play both sevens and 15s. Yet that has contributed to the current struggles. Last year, the primary focus in women’s rugby was sevens. But as soon as Paris was over, the focus shifted onto the 15s game. With the Women’s World Cup ahead later this year, core sevens players like Amee-Leigh Costigan, Stacey Flood, Eve Higgins, and others have moved full-time into the 15s game, leaving the sevens squad shorn of experience. It seems more likely that the women’s 7s set-up will continue to have a role to play in helping to develop young players, even if the sense is that more and more leading sevens internationals around the world are keen to break into 15s because of its growth in terms of fan interest and also revenues. Amee-Leigh Costigan has quickly become a key figure for Ireland 15s.Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO Given how the Women’s AIL has not been harnessed as a high performance pathway and how the women’s inter-provincial competition remains a fleeting window, having sevens continue as a player pathway tool would make sense. In contrast, players currently on men’s sevens contracts with the IRFU are said to be very concerned that they may not be in this position next season. There is a sad sense that this might be the end. Perhaps the Irish men’s squad will continue to compete, but be filled by a mixture of young players on provincial academy contracts and amateur club players drafted in for competition weekends. Whatever the case, these are troubling times and those stalwarts who put big chunks of their lives into lifting Ireland men’s sevens from the doldrums have every reason to feel upset. Some of those who have already stepped away feel like they were never given the kind of send-off that they had earned. McNulty, Conroy, and Kennedy – the 2022 World Rugby 7s player of the year – have recently been announced as signings for the new Rugby Premier League sevens competition that is due to take place in India this June. Sanctioned by World Rugby and backed by private funding, this Indian league has attracted other high-profile international sevens players and coaches, along with locals. The Rugby Premier League will “redefine the future of the sport,” according to Satyam Trivedi, CEO of GMR Sports, which is backing the competition. Conroy is part of the Delhi Redz team, Kennedy is listed on the Chennai Bulls squad, and McNulty has been named among the Kalinga Black Tigers group. It remains to be seen how that Indian project pans out, but it’s a sign of the times for sevens as the sport attempts to figure out exactly what it is. World Rugby has brought its SVNS series to some host cities whose locals clearly don’t care much about sevens rugby. The astronomical costs of the SVNS tour are not sustainable. The Olympics last year showed that sevens can have magnificent highs and Los Angeles 2028 may be another of them, but that can’t paper over the cracks. It’s hard to imagine sevens disappearing off the global rugby map, but the current model doesn’t seem to be sustainable. So as Ireland face into relegation play-offs in both the men’s and women’s series, there are real doubts about the future of Irish rugby sevens. Murray Kinsella Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “Troubling times for Ireland 7s as concerns about its future grow”. Recipient's Email Feedback on “Troubling times for Ireland 7s as concerns about its future grow”. Your Feedback Your Email (optional) Report a Comment Please select the reason for reporting this comment. Please give full details of the problem with the comment... This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy before taking part. Leave a Comment Submit a report Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines. 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