Once touted as Sexton's Ireland successor before being force to quit at 21, inspirational Ian McKinley will see life as a player again



Pull up a chair and be inspired. Ian McKinley, the former Leinster player tragically forced to retire at the age of 21 following blindness in one eye, is courageously making a playing comeback.



On Sunday afternoon, off the beaten track in the Italian city of Udine, the out-half once earmarked as Johnny Sexton’s potential successor will take steps he never thought he would ever be able to until the IRB sanctioned the use of newly developed player goggles.



The surroundings at via Don Bosco will be a world away from McKinley’s try-scoring man-of-the-match display against Treviso at the RDS in February 2011. Leonorso’s standard is the equivalent of Junior 2 grade here, while rugby attendances in the city consumed by the fortunes of Udinese in soccer’s Serie A rarely break the 200 to 300 mark.



But McKinley doesn’t give a fig. He has a chance to throw on his kit, lace up his boots, cross the white line and orchestrate just like he previously used to. Bellissimo.



Courage: Former Leinster fly-half Ian McKinley makes a return to rugby after devastatingly being force to quit

‘It will be the first time in 33 months I will have played,’ he enthuses. ‘It’s a nice opportunity to finally go back onto a pitch and do the thing that I loved to do the most. It’s a nice feeling to have the opportunity to go back and do something you really enjoy doing. I consider myself very lucky.’



Goggles on: The legalising on special goggles mean McKinley can return to action in Italy

Uplifting words given his gruesome ordeal. His sight was initially damaged in January 2010, a UCD team-mate accidently standing on his left eye with a stud and it burst, but he recovered sufficiently to be offered pro terms by Leinster on graduating from their academy a year later.



However, blurred vision during an end-of-season match hinted a cataract had developed. The removal procedure normally takes 15 minutes under local anaesthetic, but McKinley’s two operations under general anaesthetic lasted

90 and failed to stop his sight from further deteriorating. Then his retina detached - and that was that. He was blind in one eye. His professional career over. That was then,

though. This is now.



McKinley’s brother heard IRB were investigating the development of goggles, got in touch, helped force the initiative along and the design, launched on January 22 by manufacturer Raleri, is now set for probably its biggest test - being worn by a former professional rugby player. ‘My brother is a great man for pushing the initiative,’ explains McKinley. ‘He just contacted the right people and kept pushing it in the right areas to help things along. I’m not obligated to say we created all this. In terms of design, in terms of anything like that, no, we had no involvement. We just gave it a little push quicker.’



McKinley runs out on Sunday not looking your typical rugby player, but he won’t in any way be self-conscious about his unusual looking appearance.



‘The goggles might cause a bit of debate and I’ll also be wearing a scrum cap, so I’ll sort of look like Batman or maybe a pilot from the 1940s, but I don’t care because I’ll be playing.



‘I’ve done a good three weeks training with them and I’ve found little problems. It might be different in the game, but we’ll see how they go. I haven’t publicised this too much because it is a trial period thing and I’m treating it as a trial, but it could be a good story for others who have got eye deficiencies or eye problems or have got injuries from rugby.



‘If we can find something that can help them play, it is a nice story - and it is a nice story that I can come back to the sport. Rugby is getting a lot of bad images at the moment with concussion and various other things, so this would be a nice story if I come back from a fairly severe injury.



‘I’ve been training for a year, I’ve kept fit,’ he adds. ‘For the year before coming to Italy, I played football with Kilmacud Crokes (Dublin intermediate championship). ‘But this is a nice feeling to be back in rugby. I don’t have any nerves now, but we’ll see. I’m a fairly realistic guy but I’m also optimistic as well. You never know what might happen.’



Successor: McKinley was so highly regarded it was thought he could follow Johnathan Sexton for Ireland

This have-a-go attitude took McKinley to Italy in the first place. He’d done schools and club coaching, as well as odd jobs with Leinster, when then academy boss Colin McEntee called. ‘He said, “Listen Ian, there is an opportunity in Italy. Would you have any interest?”



‘I said I’d be very interested because I just needed to get out of Ireland. There was a lot happening in my head and I wanted to get away to something different.’



He hadn’t a word of Italian, but that was no impediment. ‘I arrived in August two years ago into a region called Friuli Venezia, right up in the north east of Italy, right in the armpit, right on the border with Slovenia.



‘It’s a fairly small region in terms of rugby. The club I train (Leonorso), its Under 16 team is one of only five U16 teams in the region, so it’s very small.’



McKinley’s work isn’t confined to getting Leonorso, three years in existence, up and running.

He helps players throughout the region with individual sessions while he’s also involved in an ambitious schools rugby project.

Italy is a country where just a single hour a week is set aside for PE and the only team sports played at school are basketball and handball, so it's fertile ground to spread rugby’s message.



‘They’re different people to people in Ireland. There’s just a different mentality and it’s not a bad thing. I’ve enjoyed it very much. I’m very lucky to have the job I have but it does take time,’ he explains. ‘It took me maybe 15 months, until a couple of months ago, to feel really settled, to know where everything is and fully understand the language and feel comfortable to ask people various things.’

