Disappointing Weekend For Ireland Men At Singapore Sevens
HSBC Rugby Sevens Series, Singapore National Stadium, Singapore 8/4/2023 Ireland Men vs Great Britain Men Ireland's Andrew Smith Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Joe Hamby
Ireland finished winless at Singapore 7s with losses to South Africa and USA on Day 2 having finished bottom of Pool D.
World Rugby HSBC Sevens Match Centre
Ireland were in 8th in the overall standings coming in to the weekend, just ten points behind South Africa in the race for automatic Olympic qualification.
Ireland failed to get on the scoreboard in the opening game and two tries for Matías Osadczuk and Luciano Gonzalez in the opening half were enough to see Argentina home 10-0.
Great Britain scored first in the second game with a try for Tom Williams converted by Kaleem Barretto to lead 7-0 at half time. Ireland hit back in the 2nd half with Liam McNamara touching down and Mark Roche adding the extras to level the game. England scored again with two minutes to go as Freddie Roddick converted his own try to make it 14 – 7.
Another Impact Player perfromance from Andrew Smith was not enough to help and GB took the win to leave Ireland winless going into the final game.Ireland started brightly in the final Pool game against Japan with a Fergus Jemphrey try converted by Hugo Lennox to hold a 7-0 lead at half time. Japan hit back with two tries in the second half from Moeki Fukushi and Yoshihiro Noguchi. Taiga Ishida added the conversion to give Japan the win and leave Ireland facing into Day 2 in the lower half of the playoffs.
Ireland Men vs Great Britain Men – Ireland’s Liam McNamara carries – Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Joe Hamby
In the 9th place playoff South Africa struck first with two tries on 6 and 7 minutes. Dylan O’Grady hit back for Ireland just a munute later but Ireland could not make further inroads and it finished 12-7 to push Ireland into the 13th place playoffs.
Ireland rounded out the weekend with defeat to the USA. An early try from Mark Roche was cancelled out by two tries for the USA to lead 12-5 at hafltime. Harry McNulty got Ireland’s second but the USA proved too strong scoring two more to seal a 26-12 win.