ONE way or the other Ireland’s Sevens Olympics will be over when the Games have scarcely begun.
That seems apt for those who were dismissive of the men’s team ever getting off the ground with Jordan Conroy remembering how they were regarded as a ‘laughing stock’.
On Friday evening, the Opening Ceremony will mark the formal start of the Games.
But, by then, Sevens rugby — along with football — will already be well underway.
On Wednesday afternoon, Ireland open up against South Africa and they also play Japan that evening.
Thursday brings the final pool game against New Zealand and a potential quarter-final.
The semi-finals and final take place on Saturday, the first official day of the Games.
Conroy is happy with the schedule.
He said: “You kind of get away from the madness in a way, just get in early, get out early. That’s the way I see it.
“It’s just that waiting as well, knowing you still have to compete when you see other athletes finishing.
“You just want to get it done and sometimes, not for us, but maybe for other athletes, that wait can cause anxiety because you want to get going.”
Conroy is one of seven players on the 12-man squad who competed in the pandemic-hit Games in Tokyo, for which qualification was secured only shortly beforehand.
This time, they have had a much longer run-in and the Tullamore man had no qualms about signing up for another cycle.
Conroy, 30, said: “I felt I was young enough still to do one more anyway.
“We definitely wanted a different experience from the Tokyo one.
“We saw that we at least wanted a normal one without all this hullabaloo around it.
“We’ve obviously got three more years’ experience on top of the players we were back by then.
“The best thing we did was not change a thing from our season because I feel like when it’s the Olympics you think you have to do this one bit extra.
“And the secret was just to maintain what we were doing and do them well, keep doing the things you are doing well and minimise the things you’re doing badly.
“Having the season beforehand was a major, major thing, to be able to work on those things and have the confidence going into this tournament.
“We’re not going to be overwhelmed. We know what to expect.
“Having had a taste of it in Tokyo, it’s not something I feel I need to go and do, go and see every athlete or exchange pins.
“I’m there to compete now. It will be a different experience.
“We’ve pretty much got a taste of it.
“I don’t feel I need to do the same things in Paris because we’ve all been to Paris before, we’ve played there, we’ve gone there on holiday, it’s not like we need to see the Eiffel Tower again.
“I’m not being smart but that’s the way I’m looking at it.”
The draw could have been kinder but the Tullamore man added: “Of the 12 teams, anyone is capable of beating the other 11 teams.
“It was going to be a tough pool anyway and we’ve taken a lot of confidence from playing these teams throughout the season to know we’ve the ability to win these games.
“It comes under the ‘who’s hungrier?’ so we’re literally just focusing on what we can do to win those games.”
TRANSFORMED
That self-assuredness is a far cry from when the programme began in 2015.
Conroy had tried his hand at athletics and been on the books of Athlone Town before turning to the sport.
The Olympics looked like a distant dream.
He said: “It’s a bit crazy to think about, that we’ve actually reached this point, talking about our second Olympics from training in a field out in DCU and UCD in the wind and rain.
“To be able to have achieved this is something special because we’ve literally built this from the ground up when no one really believed in us and we were a little bit of a laughing stock in the IRFU at the very beginning.
“I’m just glad the way it turned out for us.
“I remember when I first started, friends would be saying, ‘That’s not real rugby’.
“I was like, ‘Well, what is it then? I’ve a rugby ball, it’s got rugby rules’.
“Now it’s respected and I suppose it was something we had to do and I don’t mind doing it, and it’s recognised now in Ireland which it wasn’t for a while when we started which was OK.
“We’ve tried to put it on the map bit by bit and we hopefully did that.”
But that respect and recognition has been hard-earned as Conroy acknowledged.
He said: “When I started, I didn’t have a clue, I didn’t know what I was doing.
“I was still a very raw rugby player but I just saw it as an opportunity to better myself.
“I didn’t know down the line that this opportunity would arise or I might have actually knuckled down a lot earlier.
“But I was so disgusted with my ability to play rugby that my focus was to really get into a programme to make sure that I became a good rugby player.
“That was the first thing and then as time went on and I saw my ability to play the sport, I was like, ‘OK, maybe I can make something here with these lads’.
“And then I think it was for me trying to get on the World Series and that was the first goal anyway, qualifying for the World Series, and then after that it was like, ‘We’re on here, where to next?’
“Then it was just to establish yourself as a core team, then the Olympics came, then the World Cup came and I was like, ‘When does it ever stop?’
“I just took whatever came at us and knocked that one down and then on to the next one.”
HIGH AMBITIONS
A medal is a realistic ambition for James Topping’s side in a sport in which Fiji are the standard-bearers, winning gold in both Rio and Tokyo.
He said: “We were second this season so it kind of shows me we are well able to beat these and we shouldn’t be afraid of them.
“But they do have times of individual brilliance which you can’t take away from them.
“It’s just the fact we mainly focus on ourselves now.
“We don’t think about those teams in that frame anymore, ‘Oh my God, it’s Fiji’.
“We are aware what they can do but if we just stick to what we do, we can beat these with our strategy.
“That’s the way we’ve been the last year or two, we respect them but we don’t put them on a pedestal anymore.”