“Everybody asks me: ‘From Venice to Bellaghy?'”

A schoolboy star at St Columba’s College in Dublin, McKinley breezed into the Leinster Rugby Academy alongside many who were to become household names and he was getting picked ahead of Ian Madigan as they both moved up the ranks in the Irish province.

But just as his career was taking off after he had played six games for Leinster and represented the Ireland Under-20s, his playing days seemed over in an instant in 2010 when an inadvertent stray boot led to him losing the sight in his left eye.

A comeback was attempted but six months later, he was a retired rugby player after the risks of continuing were judged to be too great.

“I just had an accident at the bottom of a ruck in a game when stud went into my eyeball and it burst it. So I retired aged 21. It was pretty traumatic,” recalls the 31-year-old.

“Ireland….Dublin is such a small place, you would go to nightclub or bars and guys you would have played against or guys who were maybe older than you were going ‘you were such a good player. It’s such a pity what happened. You were destined for great things’.

“I hated being talked about in the past tense. That left me with a real chip on my shoulder.”

Spence’s death ‘really hit home to me’

Such talk drove McKinley, with encouragement from brother Philip, to explore whether suitable protective goggles could be found that might enable him to resume playing the sport he loved.

After travelling to Italy in 2012 to work as a youth rugby coach, two years later he made his return to action in just about the lowest rung of the Italian domestic ladder for the Leonorso Udine club.

“Guys were literally cigarette in the mouth before the game or a hamburger in one hand and bottle of beer in the other. But it was just perfect for me to get used to the goggles and see if my skills levels were still there.

“I just wanted to get out of Ireland and try and create my own path.”

But there was another big driving force. The sudden death of his Ireland Under-20 team-mate Nevin Spence along with his father Noel and brother Graham in a tragic farming accident in September 2012 hit Ian hard.

In addition to his deep sorrow, it led to perspective about his own difficulties.

“You realise quite quickly that a lot worse things can happen to you. What happened to the whole Spence family really hit home to me.

“There’s a guy who had aspirations to play international rugby and that was so cruelly taken away from him.

“You’ve got two legs, you’ve got two arms and a will to do something. You’ve just got to try and figure out a way to get back onto a rugby field safely.”

‘I couldn’t have been prouder’

McKinley’s form for Leonorso Udine quickly saw him earning a professional contact with Viadana in the top tier of the Italian domestic game.

Italy’s involvement in the 2015 World Cup then saw him given a temporary contract as cover with then Pro12 side Zebre. He was back in elite rugby and was going to give it everything and the following summer, the Irishman was signed by Benetton, the club “every Italian player wants to go to”.

Growing up, the thought of standing, chest out, belting the national anthem before his first international cap had been a dream.

In the event, it happened on the 11 November 2017 but the tune he was singing along to was Il Canto degli Italiani as opposed to Amhrán na bhFiann thanks to his form for the Treviso-based club.

“I couldn’t have been prouder,” he recalls of his Italy debut as he came on as a replacement for Carlo Canna in the second half against Fiji.

“We won the game and an ex-Italian international was in the changing room after the game and came up to me and said ‘you are in a very rare club to play your first game for Italy and win’.”

The win over the Fijians proved to be the Dubliner’s only victory in his nine Italy games.

‘I had to adapt my game’

As was the case throughout his ‘second career’, McKinley played down the effects of his disability whenever he was asked about it.

“Now that I’m retired for a second time, I can speak about it a little more.

“I remember one particular game in 2016. It was lashing horizontal rain for 80 minutes and I couldn’t see. The best way I can describe it is driving in the rain and not being able to use the wipers.”

On days like that, McKinley had extra pairs of goggles placed strategically around the pitch but there were occasions when even contingency plans like that weren’t a great deal of use.

“You’d be in the middle of Twickenham and Vunipola was running at you and you might only see one leg and you’d go for that leg.

“I had to adapt my game a little bit. I’m left footed so I didn’t see the ball sometimes when I kicked so you had to change your body position which was unnatural to me but you just had to keep working at it. You find a way.”

The county Londonderry village of Bellaghy has been McKinley’s home since he returned to Ireland last summer and he and wife Cordelia welcomed son Malachy into their lives last December.

“We were childhood sweethearts from school and when I moved to Italy she followed me. Eight years over there and I had to come back,” says McKinley, who was appointed as Rainey Old Boys’ first-team coach on the same day he announced his retirement from playing last March.

“It’s for love. The missus is from Bellaghy and I’m happy to be there. It’s been weird times but everything is opening up again and everyone has been pretty nice.”

Hear the full interview with Ian McKinley and more on The Ulster Rugby Show on BBC Two NI and the iPlayer at 22:00 BST on Thursday, 7 October