Ireland Men enjoyed a successful Rugby World Sevens Championship, improving on their 16th place seeding to finish the tournament in ninth place after a positional play off win against No. 6 seeds Australia in the early hours of this morning.

The Ireland men’s team attracted positive comments throughout their five match campaign where their only defeat was against, No. 1 seeds, South Africa. Despite an opening round scramble to beat Chile the team went on to record impressive wins against World Series core teams Kenya, Wales and Australia.

Their results are shown below.

FRI JUL 20 2018

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018, Pre-round of 16

IRELAND 17 – 12 CHILE

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018, Round of 16

SOUTH AFRICA 45 – 7 IRELAND

SAT JUL 21 2018

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018, Challenge Quarter Finals

KENYA 14 – 24 IRELAND

SUN JUL 22 2018

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018, Challenge Semi Finals

IRELAND 27 – 12 WALES

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018, Challenge Trophy Final

AUSTRALIA 14 – 24 IRELAND

It was a big statement from Team Ireland to claim the scalps of the three core sides after a tight start against Chile, where James O’Brien saved the day, and their their defeat to South Africa.

Pleasingly, they did it with some style scoring 99 points in the process, conceding 97.

The Ireland scorers are shown below.

PLAYER	TOTAL POINTS
Billy Dardis	32
Jordon Conroy	20
Hugo Keenan	17
Jimmy O’Brien	10
Terry Kennedy	10
Greg O’Shea	5
Shane Daly	5

The team will now be scrambling for games ahead of the 12-team World Sevens Series qualifying tournament at the Hong Kong Sevens in April 2019. I suspect they won’t be short of big ticket competition invites.

All they need to do now is get a few more Ulster players involved and we’ll be able to cover them in more detail.  😆 😆 😆