Ian McKinley made his return to rugby in Dublin last night, playing his first pro game of rugby in the RDS since he retired due to a freak eye incident.
McKinley, now blind in one eye, needs goggles to play rugby - and famously campaigned World Rugby and the IRFU to allow him to play on these shores. Now that IRFU relented to trial the goggles, McKinley was able to sign with Treviso on a full-term contract.
He was on the bench for the season opener against Leinster in the RDS on Friday night, and he came on to huge applause from the home crowd who remembered him fondly.
Afterwards, McKinley said he was deeply touched by the reception that it put him off his game:
It was just McKinley's tenth PRO12 game in seven years, and with him being firmly behind Italian Tommaso Allan in the pecking order, even before New Zealander Marty Banks arrives - he'll need to impress to get more chances.
McKinley has spent so much time in Italy playing recently that he will qualify to play for Italy in January. He says he's not thinking about it yet, and needs to focus on his place in the team.
In January I'm Italian yeah. But I'm not even thinking about it. This is my tenth game in the PRO12 having played back in 2009. So if you think of seven years playing in the PRO12 with ten games, it's not a lot of big returns. So I need to get a lot more experience, just to get up to speed with everything, and just keep going.
Munster could do worse than try to tempt him home to replace Johnny Holland.
