David Nucifora issues final message as Ireland high performance boss
David Nucifora has published a message on his final day working as the IRFU high performance boss in Ireland. The ex-Australian hooker arrived in Dublin in 2014 to take on a newly created position to transform the sport for the Irish and his exit on Thursday came after the conclusion of the Olympic rugby sevens in Paris earlier this week.
The re-establishment of the sevens game was one of Nucifora’s biggest achievements on his watch, while he also helped to build the foundation for the Ireland men’s national team to enjoy a greater consistency in results with Joe Schmidt and now Andy Farrell at the helm.
Nucifora had coached at the Brumbies and the Blues in the noughties before moving on to become general manager at the Rugby Australia high performance unit in 2009. It was five years later when he was recruited by the IRFU. Now 62, he will now look to work as an independent advisor on high performance projects around the world. David Humphreys has taken over his IRFU role.
Posting to LinkedIn on Thursday, Nucifora wrote: “After 10 years my time at Irish Rugby as performance director today comes to an end. It has been a privilege to have been given the responsibility to have oversight for professional rugby in Ireland for this period.
“It has been an exhilarating ride with considerable change during this period and one that I have thoroughly enjoyed. This has been brought about by the people in our high performance team who are exceptional at what they do and have driven change and continual improvement over this period to help Irish Rugby get to where it is today.
“I thank you immensely for your contributions and on a professional and personal level a privilege to work with you all. In the coming weeks I will hopefully be able to communicate my next challenge as I seek to work globally on independent high performance advisory projects as they come to light. Thanks to everyone.”
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Yeah they're away of it too. It was brought up in one of the Italian focused articles. They are performing now and trying to move out of that 'being in awe' type attitude.
Very easy to say we're good enough to put all our focus on wining this last big game of the year (this one) though, you also need to be consistent and still perform in the other games (slip up against Georgia) and not get ahead of yourself. Not think you're too good for teams like Argentina and Georgia just because theres a shift in attitude towards thinking 'were good enough to beat anybody now'. Hope they go forward from here but I think this performance is still only good enough to keep them off wooden spoon 6N position (keep them well away from the bottom mind you).
Go to commentsYeah I predicted (out of thin air) it to be more like 30 points between them. You don't think it wasn't more like that because they picked jaded players?
Will have a look at the game now I guess.
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