Terry Kennedy's sabbatical Down Under has him up for the Ireland Sevens' Olympic qualifying bid this week.
When he was crowned as the world Sevens player of the year in Monaco last November, Kennedy flew in from his temporary Sydney home rather than from Dublin.
The 26-year-old scored 50 tries in last season's World Series and Ireland boss James Topping admitted he was "irreplaceable", after he helped the team to a best-ever finish in the World Series and to their first World Cup medal in South Africa last September.
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“It was something I always wanted to do, go and live somewhere else, and Australia was always on the horizon for me," Kennedy explained.
"It got delayed with Tokyo being pushed back and even after Tokyo I did the year on the series and there is never the perfect time.
"So it wasn’t ideal having to miss a bit of the year with the lads but I played the World Cup, managed to get down for a few months and then got back now.
"Delighted I did it. No major reason other than something I always wanted to do. It was a cool experience."
Kennedy worked in the financial arena for the team's sponsor Tritonlake while in Sydney, an experience that pushed him out of his comfort zone.
He took the opportunity to visit Melbourne, Byron Bay, the Central Coast area, the Hunter Valley wine country and more, and to attend numerous musical festivals.
He did hook up with the team for their games in Australia and New Zealand in January and made sure to return in time for the recent Algarve tournament won by Ireland ahead of this week's vital European Games participation.
Kennedy has come back refreshed and ready to go again.
"Mentally it definitely gives you a new lease of life," he said of the break.
"We had a couple of long seasons after Covid when there were lots of doubts, we played that Monaco tournament and then the Olympics and we didn’t have a huge break after that before we were straight back in for another full season - which was a longer season because we had the World Cup in September.
"So we didn’t have a proper summer break there. It’s kind of been two or three seasons for some lads without a prolonged break so it definitely can benefit, depending on personal scenarios. I don’t think I could have taken a break and still been in Dublin.
"It's something I’ve always been very conscious of - it gets you away from thinking about rugby all the time and it gives you an idea of what you want to do after rugby.”
This tournament doubles up as the final qualifier for Paris 2024 apart from the repechage event in Monaco just three weeks before the Games next summer.
Having gone through that process for Tokyo leaving them burned out for the actual Games, Ireland want to avoid that last-gasp route and got their campaign off to a strong start yesterday with wins over Poland and Italy, and they face Germany at lunchtime today before a quarter-final this evening.
"We had to go through the repechage way last time and it is very high-stakes stuff and it doesn’t give you as much runway into the actual Olympic tournament that you would like," Kennedy admitted.
"Looking back now if you had that full year of preparation and everything geared towards the Olympics it would definitely be helpful.
"For us, it would be brilliant to get there and then we could build as a squad through the whole year to next summer.
"Last time, mentally, we were always building towards that Monaco tournament rather than the Olympics so it was hard to regroup and go again. This time if we qualify earlier it will give us a lot more runway.”
