Ireland Women's Sevens: Aiden McNulty handed coach role on full-time basis

Image source, Inpho

Image caption, McNulty was in interim charge of the Ireland women's Sevens squad during the IRFU tournament played in Dublin in June

Aiden McNulty has been appointed as Ireland Women's Seven coach on a full-time basis after being interim coach for the concluding part of last season.

McNulty's permanent role will see him moving from his current job as Ulster's Elite Performance Development Officer.

He will start his new job at the IRFU's high performance centre next week.

"Aiden did such a good job with the group towards the end of last season," said IRFU Director of Sevens and Women's Rugby Anthony Eddy.

Eddy has combined his director role in recent years with acting as coach to both the men's and women's sevens teams.

McNulty's first task with the Irish women will be preparing the squad for the opening legs of the World Series in Dubai in late November and early next month.

The new coach said he was "enormously excited to be back working with everyone involved within the Ireland Women's Sevens programme".

"Having witnessed first-hand the high potential and skill-set within the squad, I'm delighted to be tasked with the job of stretching, challenging and supporting them into the future," said McNulty.

Ireland kick-started their season by winning the annual Elche 7s tournament last month which was a warm-up competition ahead of the squad's return to World Series action for the first time since January 2020 due to the disruptions caused by Covid-19.

Irish women's rugby suffered a huge blow in September when the 15s team failed to qualify for next year's World Cup.

After that surprise failure, former Ireland women's coach Philip Doyle called on the IRFU to separate the women's Sevens and 15s games.

"There has to be a clear cut between Sevens and 15s. Yes there can be limited overlap but 15s really has to cut away on its own to a certain extent and start to develop their own players," said Doyle, who guided Ireland to the 2014 World Cup semi-finals a year after leading the squad to a Six Nations Grand Slam.

"The Irish Sports Council put a lot of money into Sevens because quite simply there were sniffing a [Olympic] medal.

"They started putting in a lot of money which is a good thing but it just hasn't worked. You can't put a Sevens player into a 15s game with virtually no experience."