'Look, it’s a unique job, unbelievable... I’ll miss it when it goes'

Jack Kelly is living the rugby dream, jetting into Dubai this week with James Topping’s Ireland sevens team for the start of an attractive season that will culminate in the HSBC SVNS Series finale in Madrid followed by an appearance at the Olympic Games in Paris next July.

For Kelly, it’s quite the comeback story. Not all that long ago Leo Cullen had called the academy member into the Leinster HQ at UCD and told him they wouldn’t be renewing his contract.

No bother. Having made his sevens debut at Twickenham in 2019 while on the books at the Irish province he debuted for the previous year in the PRO16 and skippered their A team, he swiftly threw his lot in with the short format code and has thrived, now coupling his globe-trotting rugby activities with legal profession first steps in the real world.

He told RugbyPass how he is loving this dynamic. “I’ve joined a law firm this year, McCann FitzGerald, as a trainee. I’ll spend my next year and a half in there basically learning from different partners within the firm and then hopefully qualify.

“I’m playing here and then also working in there. It gives me an insight into both worlds. It’s definitely a different job. I joked with my boss when I came in on day one that it was the first day that I had worn trousers to work; I usually wear shorts to work every day.

“Look, it’s a unique job, unbelievable. I absolutely love doing this and I love the travel and I love playing with my friends and I love how hard it is. I’ll miss it when it goes.”

Now 26 and set to fly onto Cape Town once the coming weekend’s circuit-opening tournament is complete in Dubai, the fascinating thing about Ireland’s current sevens prominence is that less than a decade ago they didn’t even have a team.

Financial considerations meant that the IRFU had for quite some time abandoned its part-time sevens programme but David Nucifora made its rebirth part of his policy when he arrived as high performance boss.

The early years involved a myriad of backwater events far, far away from the glamour of HSBC tournaments, but they are now a core team, qualifying for the top table in 2019 and also reaching the delayed Tokyo Olympics.

That initial lack of profile meant that sevens was never on the teenage Kelly’s radar as an aspiring full-back on the up in 15s, progress that eventually led to Joe Schmidt inviting him to train with the Ireland senior squad for the 2016 November Test series and he went on to captain the U20s in their age-grade Six Nations the following spring.

“I joined the Leinster academy and for that period I was definitely looking to be a rugby 15s player and to play for Leinster and play for Ireland that way. When I got drafted in to play sevens I absolutely loved it.

“You’re right, I hadn’t considered it as a pathway but once I joined the team I saw how much fun it was, the opportunity to go to an Olympics. They are things that have really grown in me over the last couple of years and now it’s the main focus of my life. It’s my main aspiration.”

Explain the attraction. “It’s good fun, it’s intense, it’s hard on the body but probably some of the best days of my life have been spent on the circuit. You’re travelling with your best friends and you get incredibly close over the week or the two weeks that you spend on your together.

“It can be tough in being very demanding on the body, the tournaments are very tough and the training in-between then can be tough, and it’s unbelievable when it is going your way but it can be a very tough place to be when it’s not.”

The covid stoppage was especially challenging. Sevens is about touring the world, but it ground to a sudden halt. “It was a very different period for us,” Kelly recalled. “Sevens is travel and when the world shuts down and you can’t travel, it’s very hard to operate as a sevens programme.

“What we did was basically stripped the gym here in Dublin and whatever anyone could bring home they brought home and then we would often times link up on zoom meetings and do our own work when we could go for runs and that. We wouldn’t be running together but we would be putting our times in making sure we were staying in touch.

“To a certain degree it was kind of nice to having a bit of a break from what our normal training is. Some guys got very into cross-fit and some into road running. Every kept very fit, some people got even fitter, but it was very nice to final get back to a bit of normality and get back in training together and actually playing rugby. We did a lot of running but we’re not runners.”

That perseverance was eventually rewarded, Kelly in particular referencing the aftermath of last summer’s Olympics ticket-securing triumph in Poland. “The day after the tournament in Kkakow, ourselves, all our families and girlfriends rented a boat, we went out on the river together, had a couple of drinks, had a bit of as song and a dance which was quite special for us.

“Sometimes you play in places that are quite far away and our parents and family can’t travel with us. To be in Europe, to be in Krakow and to have our support come out and support us, it was great to spend a day with everyone who had spend so much time supporting us.

“We had a difficult path to the last Olympics – we qualified three weeks before in Monaco. It’s very nice to have that in the bag so early in the season to be able to focus on our first game in Paris,” said Kelly, quipping about tucket requests: “It’s competitive so far.

“The families and the girlfriends are incredibly close, the parents are very good at supporting us whenever they can. Some trips can be expensive so it’s not possible every time but they have all become great friends through the sevens programme and by extension we all just feel we are just a big family.”

Before Paris, the reimagined SVNS Series is set to commence in UAE and South Africa. “It’s different but not massively different. We know we still have to show up to win a pool stage, win a quarter-final. To us, not much has changed.

“I suppose there are less teams and the teams that you do play are of a higher standard because there are just 12 instead of 16. That way everyone in that 12-team tournament is a really competitive team that you have to be at your best to beat. So in terms of preparation for Paris that is exactly what we want. We want to be competing with the best teams week in and week out so it has given us the opportunity to do that.”

What does he make of Australia bringing in Michael Hooper and France courting Antoine Dupont? “I can understand why they want to get involved.

"Whether we come up against them soon or not I don’t know. I can understand their decision anyway. I suppose it does definitely grow our profile… and it’s great for us. We love the opportunity to play the best players we can play.”

• Click here for all the details about the coming weekend's HSBC SVNS Series opener in Dubai