From Wicklow, to Toulouse, and bee tattoos: Lucy Mulhall’s journey to the Paris Olympics

After what has been a decade-long and often serendipitous journey with the Ireland Women’s Sevens rugby team, Lucy Mulhall has a safe and secure booking to her ultimate destination.

Qualification for next summer’s Paris Olympics, achieved last May, also helped turned the fortunes and possible fame for Women’s Sevens in this country after near misses to make Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

It’s been a long journey from the family farm in Crossbridge, Tinahely in Wicklow, Mulhall by her own admission growing up in a sports-mad family where the Olympics were always the ultimate spectacle.

“There’s still plenty of days when you walk up and go ‘Jeez, we did it’,” she says. “It still feels very surreal and it’s very exciting.”

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But Mulhall is not getting too far ahead of herself: nine seasons as Ireland captain, next month will see the start of another World Rugby Sevens series, all the way to a potential final in Madrid the first weekend in June.

Not forgetting her wedding day either, to fiancée Michael Rock, on December 21st – the shortest day of the year. “The only time I could guarantee I would be in the country,” she says.

Still the team’s Paris prospects have been beckoning brightly since an early Sunday morning last May, securing the fourth and final automatic Olympic qualification berth with a pulsating 10-5 victory over Fiji at the Toulouse Tournament. A month later, the Ireland Men’s Sevens team also qualified, repeating their Tokyo achievement.

“It’s sunk in now to the degree that it’s been great prep all pre-season, there’s plenty of planning around trips, family booking tickets, all of that,” says Mulhall. “We didn’t ever think we’d have this much time beforehand. The lads the last time [for Tokyo] only had a month beforehand, so we feel very fortunate to go to the Olympics to perform, not just qualifying for the Olympics and turn up.”

As it turned out, many of the Paris tickets were already sorted even before they’d qualified: “I came off the pitch in Toulouse, after qualifying, hugging my family and all, and two or three minutes later they turned around, Michael and mam and dad, and they were like ‘we actually got tickets two months ago . . . we believed in you!’

“And the whole Tinahely GAA club, my ladies team back home, they all came to Toulouse and they’re all booked too, flights and accommodation and tickets.”

Now aged 30, Mulhall understands the Sevens code is still obscure and largely invisible for many people, beyond the obvious knowledge of it being seven-a-side. The hope is their Olympic qualification can help change that.

“For me, growing up, Sonia O’Sullivan was just one of the biggest icons of Irish sport. And Katie Taylor has been a massive role model, I just admire for what she stands for, and nothing she’s achieved in sport ever changed her.

“And equally what she did for boxing in Ireland, we’re trying to do something similar. Maybe one day we’ll be able to reach that, but she [Taylor] has always been something for me to sort of strive for.”

What is certain is throughout the last decade her passion and love for the game hasn’t once wavered: “I came to it a different way, through GAA. It’s really fast paced, but the levels of accountability are massive when you’re on a full-sized pitch. You miss a tackle and there’s a try. Equally there’s this element that no one player on their own can do anything. You’re so dependent on the player inside and outside you, that’s what allows you build such close relationships with your teammates.

“Hopefully one day it is played more around the country, because it’s a really accessible sport. And I’ve made friends for life and to get to wear the Irish jersey, that’s the dream.”

Although contracted with the IRFU, Mulhall also works with Triton Lake (“future-proofing myself”, she says “because I reached the milestone of 30 this year so have to start thinking about the future”) and enjoys that lifestyle balance.

“It’s not a financial thing. Even if we were getting paid hundreds of thousands I think it’s a good thing for me to have that mental balance. We’re going to travel a week to 10 days of every month for the next six months. And to places like Dubai and Cape Town for two and a half weeks so there’s plenty of time away.

“Our Olympic seeding is also coming from the World Series so there’s loads to plan for, at the same time, not getting distracted from Paris.”

Their pre-Games base will be in Tours, same as the men’s Ireland team for their recent World Cup and there’s already a daily reminder of what they’ve achieved in the bee tattoos Mulhall and other teammates got after the Paris qualification.

“We started doing some work with Siobhan McArdle [the sports psychologist] and came up with this theme that we are all just part of one hive, all bees in one hive. Our mantra for Toulouse was ‘be present, be buzzing and be together’.

“Once we qualified we promised that we’d go get bees so myself, Stacey [Flood] and Amee-Leigh [Murphy-Crowe], who are actually my bridesmaids, we went and got the tattoos mid-hen party. Luckily they look nice. And when you sometimes glance at it it’s a reminder that yeah, we actually did that!”

Lucy Mulhall is an ambassador for the Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI) Dare to Believe Programme.