Jordan Conroy left 'sickened' by Ireland's Olympic experience

When New Zealand and Ireland were battling it out to see who would be crowned Pool A winners in the Olympics, few would have thought they would be meeting again two days later to see who came fifth in the final standings.

Both sides had looked mightily impressive in their opening two pool-stage matches, both beating both South Africa and Japan to set up a finale to see who they faced in the quarter-finals.

New Zealand narrowly won that encounter 14-12 to book a quarter-final rematch with South Africa, who had beaten Japan 49-5 30 minutes before to squeeze into the knockouts despite coming third in Pool A. Ireland, meanwhile, were condemned to face reigning champions Fiji- a tougher test but one that they were more than capable of overcoming.

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Cut to the final day of the men’s sevens at the Olympics and South Africa were receiving a bronze medal while both the All Blacks Sevens and Ireland had to settle for fifth and sixth place, respectively. It was an experience that “sickened” Ireland speedster Jordan Conroy.

Joining the Off The Ball podcast recently, the Ireland star, who started on the bench in the quarter-final, candidly expressed his feelings after seeing a team they had already beaten receive a medal, but admitted that sevens can be “funny” sometimes.

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“I’ll be honest, we’re sickened,” the 30-year-old said.

“Because sometimes sevens is such a funny game where you could lose two games and then still make it through by the skin of your teeth. And we’ve done it ourselves in the World Series where we’ve lost two games but we’ve got two bonus points and a win and we’ve come third ourselves. So it’s not like you don’t see it.

“But it’s a bit of a sickener when it’s from our group and then they managed to beat New Zealand and then just get third. Sometimes you just feel sickened by that. And that’s just God’s honest truth, you’re just a bit sick and you’re like ‘goddammit, we’ve been so hard done by,’ and then they get third. Fair play to them at the end of the day.”