Italian rugby player reveals just how hard life is in Italy right now
Italian rugby player Ian McKinley has revealed what life is like in lockdown for Italians in the region of Benetton as the country is gripped in lockdown.
The Benetton rugby fly-half is currently in lockdown in Italy as the country is the worst-suffering country with the pandemic.
RugbyPass spoke to the Italian-qualified fly-half who spoke to Jim Hamilton about how hard life was in lockdown.
He spoke about how rugby players are mainly focusing on using CrossFit to keep fit.
However, in Italy, players can only leave their house if they are getting food or walking their dog, so this leaves little room for players to keep fit.
McKinley said that luckily nobody that he knows as has contracted Coronavirus yet which is very lucky.
When Jim asked him about what it was like in Italy at the moment, he said that life was hard but that there was no panic buying to the scale that we have seen in the UK and Ireland.
It’s now roughly eight years since the accident that led to Ian McKinley losing the sight in his left eye.
In a freak accident, a stray boot from a fellow teammate perforated his left eye while playing a club match in 2010 for University College Dublin, leaving him partially blind in that eye.
The injury would be a career-ending one for 99.9% of professional athletes but not for McKinley.
The flyhalf retired briefly in 2011 after the shock realisation that his retina had detached, rendering him completely blind in his left eye.
He resumed his career, with the aid of protective goggles for Rugby Viadana in Italy, a semi-professional side playing in the Italian Eccellenza.
In 2015, he would make his return to the Pro12, when Zebre needed cover at flyhalf during the World Cup.
McKinley would play a further two times for Zebre throughout the course of that season, one of those fixtures was against his previous team, Leinster.
