Roche Confident That Ireland’s Medal Chase Will Gather Pace

The hard work put in across the season, and their medal haul from the HSBC SVNS Series, has Mark Roche convinced that the Ireland Men’s Sevens team can shoot for Olympic glory at the Stade de France next week.

Ireland are currently completing their preparations for the 2024 Games with a 10-day training camp, and yesterday saw them play Uruguay and Australia in front of fans and interested locals at their Tours base.

This will be Roche’s second Olympics and he is determined to replicate their recent form on the big Paris stage, following the silver medal and three bronzes won on the SVNS Series circuit, and last month’s Rugby Europe Sevens Championship gold in Hamburg.

“The confidence is really high. We’re not overdoing or overthinking it but we definitely can say we are contenders for a medal,” said the Dublin-born scrum half, who has the Olympic rings tattooed on his right forearm.

“We are going for gold, we have the ability to win gold. It’s just small things that if we can fix by ourselves, our own game will be fine. We can definitely take it to everybody in Paris.

“Our game is quite possession based – hold onto the ball, drag teams around the pitch, and make them work harder than we can, and get the joys of scoring.

“We’ve kind of seen through the whole year every time we make a mistake, cough up possession, we kind of get punished quite quickly.

“So for us, it’s trying to avoid mistakes but trying not to be too cautious and play a safe game. We want to be expansive, try to put teams away.”

James Topping’s side beat all before them during this year’s SVNS Series, including a first ever win over New Zealand, one of their Pool A opponents in Paris. They were a close second to Argentina in the SVNS League table, finishing fifth or higher at each tournament.

The Paris-bound contingent includes seven players who took part in the Covid-19-impacted Tokyo Games in 2021. They have unfinished business after finishing ending up 10th overall on their Olympic debut, with Roche scoring a try in their play-off win over South Korea.

There was only a five-week gap between Ireland qualifying for Tokyo, via the Repechage route, and playing their first pool game against South Africa. Therefore, securing their Olympic spot a full year out this time around was a huge boost.

“I said to a couple of guys, and my wife Jen at home, (it feels) completely different,” insisted Roche, one of the IRFU Sevens programme’s ‘Originals’ from the Rugby Europe Division C days back in 2015.

“Three years ago, I was waiting on a call after the Repechage in Monaco, I was the 13th or 14th man, I actually didn’t think I was going to get in the selected 12.

“Then Anthony (Eddy, Ireland’s then-head coach) called me up, three weeks before the Olympics. I was ecstatic, I was over the moon.”

Roche has experienced plenty of ups and downs during his time in the Sevens set-up, with their first attempt at making the Olympics falling short in 2016, and there was also heartbreak at the World Series qualifier in Hong Kong two years later.

He missed the 2018 Rugby World Cup Sevens due to a broken leg, but those setbacks made the team more battle-hardened and even hungrier to make their mark as a World Series core team, where they are now an established force on the circuit and regular medal contenders.

It is all a far cry from the 2014 launch of the Men’s Sevens programme, which was introduced as part of an expanded player development pathway by David Nucifora. He is currently overseeing preparations for the Paris Olympics as he signs off after 10 years as IRFU Performance Director.

Recalling how he got involved originally, Roche explained: “No, definitely not thinking Olympics (back then)! Actually, when I signed up, I didn’t fully know what was going to happen with this programme.

“I was actually an event manager in Lansdowne in Tag (rugby) in the summer, and one of the referees got on to me and said, ‘I think you’d be great for Sevens, I think it would be a great opportunity to try something different’.

“He was like, ‘I’ll send on the page’. The IRFU put it out on their website that there were trials for Sevens. So I signed on and now I’m going to my second Olympics!

“There was fitness testing in Santry, there was a big trial, about 40 players on the back pitch of Lansdowne. We played games that day and that was it.

“Going back nine years, it was quite simple. It was out the back of DCU. Tuesdays, Thursdays, some evenings, some during the day.

“Then the programme picked up a little bit because it was coming into the summer and people had a bit of time off, and (provincial) Academies were coming up. It was very simple and very basic.”

Before that first Rugby Europe Sevens adventure in the Bosnian city of Zenica, the former Blackrock College student had played World Rugby Under-20 Championship rugby for Ireland, alongside the likes of Josh van der Flier, Luke McGrath, and future Ireland Sevens captain Tom Daly.

2015 saw him become an Ireland Club international as well as scoring a try in Lansdowne’s All-Ireland League Division 1A final victory over Clontarf.

However, Sevens gradually became his main focus and he has not looked back, even getting to play alongside his younger brother, Tom, in the green jersey in recent years.

“I tried to go the 15s route (as a centre/winger), it didn’t work out for me. It was obviously the universe telling me there was something else for me.

“It kind of only got to me when we had our qualifier the first time in Monaco in 2016 when I kind of thought it was all real now, there is an Olympics here, it’s possible, and then thinking about the World Series.

“So early on, there was not much thought about what could happen, or where this programme could go.”

Away from the daily grind at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Abbotstown, and the team’s impressive SVNS Series exploits, Roche found time to marry his long-term partner, Jennapher, last August.

The couple welcomed baby Cooper into the world in early June, and together with their older son Josh, it has been a busy time for the young family. The newborn’s arrival was a welcome distraction for Mark ahead of the Olympic squad’s selection.

“It definitely took my mind off it a lot,” noted the 31-year-old, who has a strong background in personal fitness training, working with Origin Fitness in Dublin, as well as rugby coaching experience with a number of club and schools teams.

“There was a lot of building up, just getting the room ready, the house ready, making sure Jennapher was okay. We were in a good place going into the pregnancy. Yeah, there wasn’t much nerves towards the (Olympic) selection.”