Ireland Launch Men’s Sevens Side

IRFU Performance Director David Nucifora has announced that Irish Rugby will be introducing a Men’s Sevens Programme this season as part of the IRFU’s expanded Player Development Pathway.

The IRFU have entered a team in the Men's Rugby Europe Championships which take place in Montenegro in June 2015 and will compete in Division C of that competition.

David Nucifora, commented, "We are starting right down at the bottom and will work our way up. The
Sevens programme is part of the development pathway.

"Sevens is a wonderful game in that it allows you to judge talent and give players the opportunity to play another form of the game that shows you different things about their strengths and weaknesses.

"Sevens as a game has really developed over the past three to five years. It's a very confrontational game now.

"You quickly learn about players whether they can tackle whether they can carry – a whole range of different things about them that are important to both forms of the game.

"As we are starting in Division C it will very much be a crawl before you can walk scenario. This year the Sevens Programme will be based on the couple of tournaments that are available to us, a couple of warm-up tournaments and the camps where we assemble the talent we have identified," Nucifora added.

Speaking of where the players for the Sevens Programme will come from, Nucifora said, "We are conscious that that we don't place any extra burden on any of the provincial teams so primarily it will be academy, sub-academy and club players.

"Giving players an opportunity to jump into that player pathway. Hopefully we will find players we haven't seen before and they may very well end up being players that are re-introduced into the 15s game at a higher level"