SUCCESS IN HIS SIGHTS
Ian McKinley on playing top level rugby with impaired vision
Idon’t see myself as someone different,” insists Ian McKinley. “I see myself as a normal rugby player.”
But Ian McKinley isn’t just a normal rugby player. He’s the guy wearing the goggles. He’s the guy with only one functioning eye, having completely lost the sight in his left one following an accident in 2010 when a team-mate’s stud perforated his eyeball. “If I cover my right eye, I can’t even see if the sun is shining,” he says. And he is playing in positions, out-half and full-back, where spatial awareness is vital, holding his own at PRO12 level with Benetton Treviso.
“Some people have said to me that it’s perhaps not the wisest thing to keep playing,” he says. “My dad said I should look at the risk versus the rewards – he’s just a worried parent, and I’m sure I’d feel the same if I had kids. But for me, the rewards are a lot greater. Some people think I’m crazy, but it’s a calculated risk. I’ve played nearly 100 games now in the goggles, and nothing bad has happened.
“The biggest thing for me is that I was only 21 when I first retired, and for any professional sportsman, having to finish when it’s not on your terms is very difficult to deal with. I’d had all those dreams and aspirations, I’d only played six times for Leinster… it was very tough to take.
“Being spoken about in the past tense was also difficult. People would say, ‘he was a good player’ or ‘he had so much promise’. But now I’ve been given the tools to play like anyone else and I just want to continue that.”
The ‘tools’ McKinley is referring to are the Raleri goggles he wears to play rugby, and ‘tool’ is perhaps overstating their case: they do nothing to enhance his vision; they simply protect his good eye. He wears them because he was gouged, on two separate occasions, in his good eye, playing club rugby after his initial return from the accident.
And even then, he was involved in a protracted battle to be allowed to wear them in Ireland; until February 2016, the goggles were banned by the IRFU, despite being legal in Italy, where the Dubliner has been playing since making his comeback in 2014.
McKinley is certainly operating at a disadvantage. Although he returned from the initial accident within six months, with 70pc vision in the left eye, and got back in the Leinster side, a year later he developed a cataract (something medical experts had predicted would happen earlier) that suddenly left his sight blurry – “it happened while I was taking a kick at goal” and not long afterwards, the retina detached, irreparably.
Losing sight in an eye affects depth perception; when he was first hospitalised, he reached to pour water from a jug into a cup beside his bed “and missed by about a metre”. His peripheral vision is also reduced, making him more vulnerable to tacklers blindsiding him – and consequently more vulnerable to injury.
“You play with the hand you have been dealt,” he shrugs. “It’s not the worst thing that has happened to anybody. You get on with it. With training, the other eye can adapt to improve depth perception.
“People ask if my other senses have improved, as if I can suddenly hear better! But it is amazing what you can train the mind to do. I try to incorporate things into my training programme – for example, I move my head around more than I used to, and I spend a lot of time kicking balls at different angles.”
Still only 27, McKinley knows he will probably never be the player he promised to be when he broke into the Leinster setup as a teenager, but he is determined to be the best player he can be.
“Before the injury, my starts were
limited,” he says. “At Leinster, I played six (senior) games in three years. I was behind Johnny Sexton and other world-class players. I feel that my career has only just started; that last season was my first as a pro. I played 28 games for Treviso in the PRO12 and Challenge Cup (every game of the season).”
He helped Treviso to their highest PRO12 finish in four years – only third from bottom, but good enough to qualify them for the Champions Cup – and his consistency earned him a call-up to Conor O’Shea’s Italy senior training squad in the summer, although he didn’t make the cut for the Tests.
He qualifies for the Azzurri on the old three-year residency rule (it is being increased to five years) having initially moved to Italy as coach of third-division club Leonorso, before progressing to Treviso via top-flight club Viadana and then a handful of PRO12 games for Zebre.
“I was hugely honoured to get the call,” says the former Ireland U-20 star, who has guided Treviso to rare back-to-back victories this month.
“It would be wrong of me to say I feel 100pc Italian, but Italy has given such a big opportunity, both professionally and socially, and I would like to try to thank Italian rugby by putting in my best performances on the pitch, and hopefully adding more competition for places.”
McKinley has endeared himself to the locals by learning the language; he posts in Italian on his Facebook page, which is full of posts hailing him as an inspirational figure.
“The response has been incredible,” he says. “I get messages from all over the world. Hearing these stories, often from parents talking about the challenges their children have overcome, helps motivate me to keep going.”