Greg O'Shea admits he was almost left looking silly for ditching his celebrity status only to miss out on Tokyo.
Instead, he is part of an Ireland Sevens team "aiming for the stars" and a place on the medal podium in the Olympics.
O'Shea won Love Island but ditched the chance for fame and possibly fortune to stick with the Sevens set-up.
But it almost backfired in the end as he initially wasn't selected for the final Games qualifiers in Monaco that took place last month.
“Aw man, it’s been an emotional roller-coaster," he admitted.
"I wasn’t initially picked for Monaco which was fair enough, I hadn’t really been training, I wasn’t at peak performance.
"Then a couple of injuries happened, I got in and I started most of the games and played most of the minutes in Monaco and then I got picked for Tokyo and it’s just been a whirlwind of emotion.
"But I’ve just got to stay grounded and do my bit for the team and hopefully I’ll play a lot in Tokyo."
O'Shea insists he wasn't torn between going down the celebrity route or sticking with the Sevens programme.
“You’d kind of presume that it was a difficult choice but to be honest with you, but even going into that show, I just knew what my decision was going to be," he said.
"We’d been working too hard here in the Sevens programme for the last five or six years.
"I couldn’t just throw it all away because I got too big for my boots and decided to move to the UK and become a celebrity.
"I had to come back here, put my hand up and try to get into the team.
"I’ve made it, thank God, so I can be happy with my decision. It nearly didn’t work out for me and I was going to look very silly but I’m glad it paid off in the end.”
The 26-year-old believes an Olympic medal would be a fitting reward for all the blood, sweat and tears the Irish Sevens squad have experienced.
There were scenes of celebration when O'Shea and his team-mates secured the last ticket to Tokyo in their recent dramatic play-off against France.
But now he would love to be on the medal podium in the coming weeks.
“Aw man, it would just make the last six years all worth it," the Limerick man said.
"It would really give some recognition and respect for the Sevens programme.
"Obviously we’re in the shadow of the 15s which is normal enough, they’re one of the best in the world.
"We want to be one of the best in the world as well and I think we can do it, make the country proud and see what happens, fingers crossed.
“We’ve USA, Kenya and South Africa. We’ve played them all before and we’ve beaten them all before which is the main part so we know we can do it.
"The lads are in great shape and I think because we were playing in Monaco we’ve really good prep done and the lads are in great shape so I think we can do well.
“I’m not sure what the other countries have been doing of late.
"Tokyo has just become a recent idea for us in the last couple of weeks because we were so focussed on qualifying for the Olympics which was two years building up to Monaco and thank God we did it, all our hard work paid off.
“The last couple of weeks we’ve been prepping for Tokyo and it’s gone really, really well.
"We’re probably going to aim for the stars and a medal and try and make the country proud and see what happens."
