Hugo Keenan says he will 'fully commit' to Ireland Sevens ahead of Olympics

Hugo Keenan has all but ruled himself out of featuring for Leinster and Ireland for the rest of the season saying he wants to fully commit to the Sevens team ahead of the Olympic Games.

Leo Cullen's side host Ulster in the quarter-finals of the BKT URC on Saturday (5pm) with a potential semi-final and final to come on the following two weekends.

Speaking last week, Leinster senior coach Jacques Nienaber said it was his "understanding that he won't be available".

Andy Farrell’s Ireland side will travel to South Africa for Tests on 6 and 13 July.

The Olympic Men’s Sevens tournament takes place at the Stade de France between 24-27 July with the squad for Paris to be named in mid-June.

Prior to that James Topping’s side will compete at the Europe Sevens Championship kicking off in Croatia’s Makarska next weekend and the second leg of that tournament in Hamburg at the end of the month.

And talking after helping Ireland to a fifth-place finish at the HSBC SVNS Grand Final in Madrid at the weekend, Keenan suggested that he would not be returning to the province, beaten in the Champions Cup final last month, before the end of the season.

"These opportunities don’t come around too often," he said after his first Sevens appearance in five years.

"I had to make a tough decision, but hopefully, it’s one that I won’t regret and I’ll fully commit to now over the next few weeks and see what happens."

Having brushed off questions about returning to Sevens in the aftermath of Antoine Dupont’s switch to the code last January, the 27-year-old revealed more details of how the move came about.

"It’s been a very busy year for me, that’s the exciting part," he said in Madrid, where France won the series.

"I suppose it was put on the table a while back