‘We let it slip’: Chay Mullins ‘gutted’ after Ireland's Olympic heartbreak

As Australia and the USA battled it out in their own Olympic men’s quarter-final on Thursday evening, Ireland’s Chay Mullins tried to find the words to summarise what had just happened.

On the back of a promising SVNS Series campaign which saw the men in green finish second at the end of the regular season, Ireland came into the Paris Games genuinely believing that they could challenge for a medal, and hopefully a gold one.

The Irish dropped one match in pool play to New Zealand 14-12, but after beating South Africa and Japan earlier in that stage of the competition, they qualified for the all-important quarter-finals. Waiting for them was a fairly tough challenge against the Fijians.

Fiji have won the only two men’s rugby sevens gold medals in Olympic Games history and they appeared desperate to make that a hat-trick at Stade de France. Ireland led 15-7 with just over three minutes to play but in a flash, the match got away from them.

Joji Nasova and Waisea Nacuqu scored a try each as Fiji took a four-point lead with a couple of minutes left to play. It was a nervy end to the fixture with Ireland offering one last attack with time up on the clock, but a wayward pass from Terry Kennedy decided it.

Fiji kicked the ball out and Ireland’s Paris Olympics dream was over.

“I’m kind of just speechless really. Gutted is the main emotion, to be honest,” Mullins said on the Olympics broadcast.

“We’re getting out here with a goal of just obviously, yesterday it was winning those two games and today it was getting past the quarter-final – we didn’t do that.

“Just looking forward to Saturday… we’ve got two more games, a chance to right our wrongs a little bit. It’s not every day you get an Olympics.

“We’re just looking to finish on a high really as a group.”

As Mullins spoke, you could see how disappointed, gutted and even a bit frustrated he was. This Irish side hadn’t played badly but just like their performances on the SVNS Series, they weren't able to hold on in knockout rugby.

Ireland finished second in the SVNS Series League this year despite only playing in one Cup Final, and that was a loss to New Zealand in SVNS Singapore. They had made a number of semi-finals but tended to lack some consistency in these must-win matches.

When they go away and reflect on the two losses at the Olympics to New Zealand and Fiji, the Ireland playing group will likely agree that they should’ve won those matches. Especially, the quarter-final loss, it was there for the taking.

But as Mullins explained: “I think it was more or less just decision making and just slight switch off really.

“We controlled the game really well against Fiji there in the first half and there were parts in the second half where we did really well again.

“I just think it was just moments where we let it slip really.”

Ireland’s will still have some matches to play at the Paris Olympics but it will be fifth-place at best. They’ll take on Perry Baker’s USA on Saturday and then either the winner or loser of New Zealand versus Argentina.

There is a rest day for the opening ceremony before rugby sevens action resumes at Stade de France on ‘day one’ of the Games this weekend. That means Ireland will have more time to think about the loss, but that could be a good thing as they look to end their Games on a high.

“All we can really do it look to the last two games,” Mullins added.

“We can see how we let it slip, what we did wrong, also what we did well because I think there was huge moments in that game where we looked, well, we know we’re a top-class team. There’s just moments that showed that.

“We can only just take that into the next two games.”