By Jonathan Bowen
On my recent trip to Sydney for the World Rugby 7s tournament I had the chance to catch up and chat with the IRFU High Performance Director: David Nucifora.
Many people in Irish rugby have credited David Nucifora for turning around the fortunes of Irish Rugby in recent years.
David has been the architect in the restructure of the Irish provincial rugby system and how the success of Leinster has directly impacted the fortunes of the national team.
David thank you for making the time to talk with me today. You must be happy with the success of the Irish Sevens rugby teams, the heat this weekend in Sydney has not been favorable to the teams but the overall program is proving to be very successful.
Yes, the program itself is going well. We are competing at the right end of the tournament which is where we want to be. The boys obviously did really well with a bronze medal and being on the dais with Fiji and New Zealand at the Rugby World Cup 7s tournament last year in South Africa.
I mean who would have thought you would be mentioning Ireland’s name in the same sphere as those top rugby seven’s countries but that is what we can do.
It has been a good program for developing new and upcoming players. We have had multiple players now come through the seven’s program that now play in the XV’s side. It has become a very important part of the overall Irish Rugby program.
Was the Irish rugby sevens program developed out of the Kinsale sevens’ tournament?
Well Ireland really didn’t have a sevens’ program. We built it from scratch through the Rugby Europe competition. Now that both teams have been on the circuit for a number of years, we are starting to get the results that see us competing at the right end of the tournament.
The sevens program offers the opportunity to grow the women’s side of the game. Our target is to try and convince women who play Camogie and Gaelic football to come across and try rugby and show them that there is a professional sport that offers them a pathway to the Olympic Games.
We are going to work hard in Irish Rugby to provide women an alternative sport and this current crop of women’s rugby players are the flag barriers of that program.
We will hopefully finish in the top four of the World Rugby Sevens seedings this year and qualify for Olympic Games in Paris 2024.
You must be proud of the development of women’s rugby in Ireland? With the recent success of the Inter Pro series and with the Combined Provinces XV team completing in the new Celtic Challenge Tournaments and the new professional contracts being offered to players, things are starting to come together for the women’s game.
We are continuing to build the depth in women’s rugby in Ireland. It hasn’t had the proper pathways established. Our aim is to create the same structure and pathways for the women’s game that had been established for the men’s game.
Creating the performance pathways that will lead to the women’s game becoming stronger alongside that, lifting the standard of coaching is obviously part of the long-term planning for the program as well.
What are your expectations for the Combined Provinces XV side playing the new Celtic Challenge?
It is just another steppingstone on the pathway program. It is very early days for the competition, it is just another way for us to develop the women’s game and get the team together to increase the amount of high-level competition they the team are exposed to.
You must be proud of the development work being done on the women’s sevens program. The team has the depth to not select players such as Amee Leigh Murphy Crowe and Heather Kennedy and still experience success?
The women’s team are currently sitting in fourth place on the World Rugby Series standings, that would be good enough to see us qualify to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris so that is our aim. There is a lot of water to still go under the bridge before we can call it a success, but we are on the right pathway I feel.
Are you heading off to Portugal after this tournament to join the Irish men’s rugby team in their pre Six Nations camp?
No, I will meet up with the team in Cardiff just before the first match. They are down there preparing for the competition and Andy Farrell is putting the team through its paces. The Six Nations tournament is an exciting and tough competition and with the quality of rugby in the northern hemisphere currently at a high, it should be a good competition this year.
Can Irish Rugby fans dare to dream of seeing the team lift the Grand Slam this year or is this just a stepping stone in the development of building a team to lift the Rugby World Cup in Paris?
I think any team that can win the Grand Slam in the current climate will be doing well. The competition is so tough. It is obviously our target at the start of the competition to win the Grand Slam, but our aim is to finish at the top of the table and win the tournament. It is a bonus if we go through it undefeated. It is a tough tournament, so we will need to start well with a good results against Wales in Cardiff.
You seem to have learnt a lot from the 2019 Rugby World Cup Campaign? Irish rugby fans expectations were so high for that competition with the team ranked No. 1 in the world. So, the disappointment of losing to New Zealand in the Quarter Final was a hard pill to swallow. Since that campaign, you instigated an extended tour of New Zealand that incorporated two matches against the New Zealand Maori and then there was the Ireland Emerging Tour of South Africa. So, was the plan to increase the depth of the Irish Men’s Rugby team so it wasn’t so reliant on two or three players?
It is about depth and competition. Performance Programming is all about creating competition for positions and allows us to create the leavers we need to remain competitive.
The Emerging Ireland tour of South Africa was one of those opportunities. The key to the program is providing the players we see as having a high potential and providing them the opportunities to develop to the next level if they are not getting enough game time with their provincial side.
At the end of the day the whole thing is about creating depth within the provinces and the national level and Andy Farrell has been very good at putting that together. We are going to need access to forty top class rugby players to win the world cup.
Have you got any concerns over the dropping of Joey Carbery from the Irish Six Nations Squad?
No, remember it is a performance-based selection. Joey will learn and develop from this and will no doubt bounce back.