RUGBY
Billy Leads Ireland To Tokyo
By Daire Walsh
Naas’ Billy Dardis will be Tokyo-bound next month after he captained the Ireland Men’s Sevens team to victory at the World Rugby Repechage Tournament in Monaco last weekend.
By securing the top prize at this event, Dardis and his international team-mates have become the first-ever Irish rugby side to qualify for the Olympic Games. A debutant against Latvia at a Rugby Europe competition in Malmö, Sweden back in June 2016, it has been quite a journey up to this point for the Kildare man.
“It’s a weird feeling, but it’s really special for us as a group. It’s absolutely life-changing. I don’t think it ever will really sink in. I’ve said it to a few guys already today. We’ll be 60 years old, sitting in a pub and people will be saying ‘that guys an Olympian for life’. Something that you will have with you. It’s pretty special,” Dardis remarked from the squad’s hotel base on Sunday evening, just hours on from their superb 28-19 final win against France.
“I’m still trying to get around to all the calls, all the texts that I’m getting from people. It’s pretty cool to do something like that for all of them. To hear from all family and friends, and to do something really special.”
Having initially featured at Junior Cup level for Newbridge College in 2010, Dardis later switched to Terenure College and his impressive form for the south Dublin school ultimately led to him being signed to an Academy contract in Leinster. He put pen to paper on a professional contract with the eastern province in advance of the 2016/17 season, only to be released at the end of that term.
He is not alone in this regard as a number of players within the current Sevens programme – including Love Island winner Greg O’Shea, who played a prominent role in Monaco – suffered similar set-backs in the 15s game. From Dardis’ perspective, this has been a real driving force behind their extraordinary rise from the obscurity of the Rugby Europe Division C in 2015 to being one of the lucky dozen to make it to the forthcoming Olympics.
“I still make it very clear that I’m still a 12 year old kid. All I dream of is playing for Ireland, running out in the Aviva and singing the national anthem in front of my family. That’s all I dream of still to this day. We’ve all endured that devastation of being let go or something like that. It gives us a lot of grit, a lot of determination. There’s a bit of a chip on the shoulder kind of thing.
“That can be a negative thing, but we channel it pretty well and we manage it pretty well to put in performances like this. Something we can be really proud of. I think our backgrounds shape us and this will really change our lives now.
“It’s going to add some real value to sport in Ireland. It’s going to show people that anyone can get to the Olympics. Lots of kids will hopefully take up rugby and take up any sport. We’ll hopefully have inspired a lot of people this weekend.”
Last weekend’s tournament – where Ireland defeated Zimbabwe, Tonga, Mexico, Samoa and Hong Kong before claiming the scalp of the French – was essentially the culmination of a project that the IRFU’s Director of Sevens, Anthony Eddy, has been crafting since he was first appointed to his present position in December 2014.
Several current 15s stars have passed through the Sevens programme in the Australian’s time at the helm, including Kildare natives Jimmy O’Brien, Tadhg Beirne and Will Connors.
Such is the ambition of this group that it comes as no surprise to hear Dardis insisting Ireland won’t be in Tokyo just to make up the numbers.
“I’ve no doubt this group of lads, they’ll enjoy this and then they’ll flip the switch. Similar to when we went to the World Cup a few years ago. We qualified and it was celebrations, but then it was very much ‘we’re going there to win’. Obviously you want to go there and win every game. We’ll be able to flick that switch pretty quickly, I think, in the next week or two,” Dardis added.
“It’s the best 12 Sevens teams in the world and we’ll absolutely be there to compete. This competition will only have set us up pretty well for it as well. Teams won’t have experienced a pressurised tournament like this in two years.
“I think it gives us every advantage. Let’s go and try and get a medal. That was said to me today. Ant [Anthony Eddy] and David Nucifora just said ‘you think this is special, imagine if we got a medal’. Coming home with a medal would be pretty cool.”