THINK TWICE BEFORE packing your cucumber sandwiches and heading for a gentle day day in Kinsale this weekend, because on Saturday and Sunday all hell is about to break loose.
Yes, for rugby lovers the May Bank Holiday on the south coast means only one thing: the Kinsale Sevens is here.
“It’s better than a week in Marbella,” says Leinster wing Darragh Fanning who promises to be on his best behaviour while nursing a broken arm on the sidelines.
Fanning will be part of the wide (and growing) entourage of the defending Open champions, the Lightning Bolts.
The Lightning Bolts emerged from the embers of the Shamrock Warriors side who aimed to become a serious feeder team if and when Ireland ever decided to compete on the global Sevens stage. Fanning played in that setup along side Robin Copeland and that involvement (coupled with the promise a weekend of rugby and beer) encouraged more St Mary’s club men to form a team could call their own.
“In 2012 after Mary’s won the AIL, they took a team down, but they were still in full celebration mode. So they barely even played a game.”
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“Last year was our first year going down with the Lightning Bolts
With Copeland moving to Cardiff and Fanning to Australia, the cult of the Bolts has spread worldwide. Among the big names wrangled in to support the Bolts are (Brumbies props) Ruaidhri Murphy, Scott Sio, Sam Warburton, Leigh Halfpenny Alex Cuthbert and Shane Lowry, a long-time close friend of Fanning, who proudly displays the images of the ‘vintage’ Volkswagon van used to make the road trip to Kinsale last year on his website.
Sean O’Brien is another who has promised to travel down to Kinsale with his pink Bolts attire this weekend. The international flanker, lured onto the Bandwagon by the team’s hyperactive Twitter account.
“Myself and Sean O’Brien won’t head down until Saturday morning, but on Friday night the Bolts will have their opening ceremony. The jerseys are handed out, the starting team is named, the captain is named – which you think would be something you would want to be, but the captain is stuck playing every minute.
“Then we name the bench, the captain of the bench, the bench of the bench and the captain of the bench of the bench…”
Captain of the bench of the bench, now that’s where you want to be.
There is a serious element to some of the rugby too, but for the most part the competition of the Social Sevens circuit is very much secondary to the, well, social side of things.
Tournament organisers Jackie Dawson and Philip Stoke ensure that; even with qualification games to fill up the Saturday schedule, knock-out fixtures dotted around Sunday and cash money promised to the winner, there is never a quiet moment or shortage of people ignoring rugby and instead packing out the competition’s main sponsored tent.
That’s where the real carnage happens.
