IRELAND CAPTAIN BILLY DARDIS LOOKING FORWARD TO WORLD CUP FINALS
By Daire Walsh
NAAS native Billy Dardis is hoping that a strong set of World Series performances can act as a springboard for the Ireland Men’s Sevens side to make a big splash at this weekend’s World Cup Finals in Cape Town.
Following the completion of the final leg in Los Angeles at the end of August, James Topping’s charges recorded a fifth-place finish in the 2021-22 edition of the World Rugby Sevens Series. This was the first fully-completed season that Dardis and his international colleagues have participated in since Ireland became a core nation in 2019.
They claimed ninth spot and the Challenge Trophy at the previous year’s World Cup in San Francisco and Dardis is aiming for an even better showing in the South African city.
“That was a big stepping stone for us. In the last World Series (the Covid-curtailed 2019-20 campaign) we came 10th. Came 10th in the Olympics and then this year has been quite impressive. We made our first World Series final. Beat the likes of Fiji and South Africa, nearly beat New Zealand,” Dardis remarked in a Zoom call from Cape Town yesterday.
“Fifth was a fair reflection of where we are as a programme, as a team and how we performed this year. We were pretty happy with it and I think now it’s an opportunity to back that up and hopefully go further. A World Cup is one-off, it’s knockout straight from the start.
“It’s going to be extremely exciting, but with it being a knockout, you can’t look too far past that first game. Hopefully we can maintain that momentum that we’ve built up throughout the year and put on a really good performance.”
Ireland’s World Cup campaign begins first thing on Friday morning with a Pre-Round of 16 affair with Portugal (kick-off 7.45am Irish time/8.45am local time). This is a game they will be expected to win, but the former Newbridge College student is quick to guard against complacency.
“Everyone’s first game of the World Cup is going to be high pressure. If anything, an 8.45 kick-off in the morning, I don’t think many people will actually be in the stadium! It could be pretty quiet. Maybe a few die hard parents that have made their way down here. We saw it a few years ago in the last World Cup.
“We played Chile in our first game and only for a try at the very end we could have lost to them. We know that, in this format, if you take teams like that for granted you can really end up with egg on your face. We’ll be going in as heavy favourites, having performed quite well throughout the year.
“For them [Portugal] coming in as underdogs, any type of win, if they score a try, if they make a line break, even if they make a tackle, it will be celebrated in their eyes. If you let that happen over and over, that can really get on top of you. It will be a big one for us and hopefully we can just be a little bit poker faced about it. Go about our work, nail down our detail, be really clinical and do the job.”
Nevertheless, the Ireland captain can’t help himself from planning a potential path to Championship glory. While there are various titles up for grabs on the third and final day of the tournament this Sunday, Dardis will of course have his sights set on securing the main prize on offer.
“We’d be lying if we said we haven’t thought of ‘okay, if we beat Portugal, then we have England in a second round match in a World Cup’. We’ve beaten England a good few times this year, but England are England. They can always show up and put on a show. Then if you win that game, you can play South Africa on Saturday night in the World Cup quarter-final.
“I think they’ve sold 165,000 tickets for this weekend so a Saturday night game against South Africa would be rocking. That’s the goal, to put ourselves in that position. We’ve played South Africa this year, we’ve beaten them, they’ve beaten us. Everyone knows when South Africa are at home, there’s lots of pressure. Everyone is expecting them to win.
“I think that would be one of the biggest games of our lives, if we were lucky enough to get there. You can’t lie and say you haven’t thought about it, but it would be nice to get to there and hopefully push on for a semi and a final.”
Yet Dardis – who has been working with TritonLake, the title sponsors of the Ireland Men’s and Women’s Sevens, since February of this year – reiterated that the challenge of Portugal remains the focus three days away from that tournament opener.
“We’ve done a lot of prep on Portugal in the last two days or three days. We’ve done a lot of analysis on them. We know what we need to do against them, we know what is coming. It’s just about us going out there, calming the nerves down a little bit and just executing on the systems that we need to do to beat them,” Dardis added.
The Ireland Women’s Sevens will also be in action at Cape Town Stadium with their Round of 16 showdown with Brazil set to take place at 12.54 Irish time (or 1.54pm local time) on Friday. Should they come through that game, Aiden McNulty’s outfit will go on to face the winners of New Zealand and Colombia in a Championship quarter-final on Saturday.