Look Beyond (2019) Movie Script
1
[rain pattering]
[indistinct chattering]
[man 1 screaming]
[man 2 grunts]
[man 1 shouting] Get on his shoulder!
[indistinct chattering]
[crowd shouting]
Alright, you're okay.
[inaudible]
[man] Uh, champion? No. I don't--
Honestly, I don't think of myself
as a champion. I just think of some--
I think of myself as someone
who wants to just give it their all.
Someone who knows that rugby is not there
for the rest of your life as a player,
so you got to maximise your time,
realise how fortunate you are
to be in this position,
to be able to do what you love doing,
and just follow your passion.
And I don't like losing.
- [people whistling]
- [vibrant music playing]
- [woman] We saw a bandage and...
- [girl] Mummy.
- [man] We got the second half.
- Come sit.
- Come say hi to Uncle Ian.
- Who is it you're playing?
- [woman 2] Um, how's South Africa?
- [boy] No.
- [laughs]
- How's the hand?
- [man 2] Look at the finger.
- Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth.
[girl] The wheels on the bus
Go round and round for nine hours
[Ian] Well, it was a long nine hours.
- Um... Hello, princess.
- Lallie, look who it is.
- [Lallie] Hello.
- Now what do you say?
I think if I'm-- 'Cause we've lost
in the last eight minutes.
- [woman 1] Aw.
- [woman 2] Yes.
[man 2] But I thought you looked
tired coming off. No?
[Ian] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then,
next game, I think is my 50th as well.
[woman 1] Oh, brilliant.
[in Italian] Did Philip tell you
that he was always late for school?
Philip would always say
that it was our dad's fault
and that Dad would drive too slow.
Thing is, driving to school
would only take us two minutes.
Philip would always wake up ten minutes
before the first class of the day...
- [woman laughs]
- ...and blame our dad.
[Ian, in English] My daddy was gonna be--
Mum's in Italy. They were following me.
- [man] Mm.
- So, yeah. It's a...
I don't mind, I just like to see them.
I don't care.
[man singing in Gaelic]
[Ian] They're building a ramp here.
There's no parking.
I think people are gonna get
public transport.
[birds chirping]
[players shouting indistinctly]
[indistinct shouting]
[man shouting indistinctly]
[Ian, in Italian]
My family is too important for me.
I am the youngest of four children.
My brother Philip and I
are ten years apart.
I've been very lucky to be brought up
by not only my mother,
but also by my sister Emma.
Emma has been incredible
and she helped me a lot
when I was a child.
I feel very lucky to have an honest
and kind family.
Um, they all keep helping me,
I feel them close to me.
My mother texts me
before and after every game.
Family is something I could never forget.
- [indistinct chattering]
- [vibrant music playing]
[man, in English] On the morning he was...
he was born,
Dad, uh, came to collect us
from June's house,
uh, to tell us that we had another, um...
[clicks tongue] ...baby brother.
- [pensive music playing]
- [babbles]
And I was absolutely over the moon
with my little brother.
[Andrew clicks tongue]
Um, he was a very good baby.
Um, he didn't sleep very well.
[baby Ian crying]
Well, we're all a bit older than Ian.
He's the baby so I was...
You know, well remember him
being born and being very young,
and I think one thing that really
sticks out for me actually is--
And kinda linking
with what he ended up doing later,
is that he used to have this...
[inhales sharply]
You remember these, like, harnesses
that you'd attach to the top of a door
and the baby would jump in them?
And, um...
[clicks tongue] He loved it.
He was in it for hours every day
and he was amazing.
He was maybe only five or six months old
but he used to kind of pull himself back
and go swinging really, like...
like just go backwards and forwards
really fast.
And I think it was probably even clear
at that stage that he was really sporty
and really kind of agile
and really physically very able.
[indistinct chattering]
[woman] She's walking there...
- [babbling]
- Well, Ian concentrates on what...
Uh, no. Pamela concentrates on walking
- but Ian concentrates on being giggly.
- [man laughs]
- [baby coos]
- Mm, isn't that nice?
Isn't that nice?
- Here you go.
- [laughter]
Yes. Well, Ian, as I say,
is nine years younger than Philip,
so Philip actually was not
very impressed when Ian was born.
[laughs] Because Philip had been the baby.
And now there was another baby,
so, um... [clicks tongue]
Philip was a little bit put out,
but he got over that.
My older two children
absolutely doted on him.
My son Andrew just adored Ian, still does.
In fact, he's Ian's godfather.
Um, and Emma, my daughter,
just became another mother to him,
because she was 12 when Ian was born.
Philip used him as a bit of a toy.
He tied him up and threw him around
and played with him in the garden,
but forgot that he was only
six months old.
Yeah, I remember we were watching--
Uh, it was myself, my brother Andrew,
my sister Emma and myself,
we were watching Home and Away,
a famous Australian television program,
and my mother and father--
I can vividly remember--
called us in, just after dinner
had finished, into the kitchen,
and they announced,
"We're gonna have another baby."
And of the three of our siblings,
with three radical different responses,
my brother Andrew broke down,
wept in tears,
hugged my mother and embraced--
thought it was the most wonderful news.
My sister I remember being a little bit
more cautious, but still very jubilant.
And me, I ran out of the house
in utter disgust.
I had been on the pinnacle.
I had my throne created
as the youngest child.
And suddenly, this--
After a long gap, this impostor
was arriving to take my throne.
And I was in denial for quite some time.
[indistinct chattering]
- [babbling]
- [Pamela giggling]
There's the famous story now,
that after three days--
And I remember it very vividly. I am...
He was in the living room with me,
and I got some skipping rope
and I decided to tie him up.
And, uh, my family came in, in horror,
at this three-day-old baby at home
tied up with a piece of rope.
[Pamela talking indistinctly]
[man on TV] Throughout 1993,
the Republic of Ireland was right
on course for World Cup qualifications
when Spain jams the script
at Lansdowne Road in October.
Now the Republic have to go
to Windsor Park,
where a win would guarantee safe passage
to the stage.
The situation began...
Yeah, Dad was a very talented sportsman.
Mum used to play hockey
up until about the time when Ian was born.
I remember going to her hockey matches.
And the two have very natural abilities.
And definitely that funnelled
most strongly into Ian
out of any of the four children.
Uh, but I remember we would play
in the back garden
and I remember just one day
he did a little move--
And nobody taught him this--
a little chip through my legs.
And it was just seeing the world
and seeing sport
in a way
that you just can't teach somebody.
So, that natural ability was very evident
and very strong early on.
[Pamela] Ready, steady, go!
[indistinct chattering]
[Pamela] Good boy.
[Emma] Come on, just run to Mummy.
Run to Mummy. Quick!
[man] Right through. Right through!
[woman speaking indistinctly]
[indistinct shouting]
[people screaming, cheering] Yeah!
Papa. Papa. Papa.
- Papa.
- Yes?
Almighty God. Praise the Lord.
- [Ian] Papa.
- [Pamela] Say your prayers, Ian.
[Ian] Amen. Praise the Lord.
Uh, my good wife, Pam, is from Dublin,
born and reared in Dublin.
I'm from the heart
of rural countryside Ireland,
a very famous county called Tipperary.
And it's a beautiful agricultural county.
[Horace] My dad was a church vicar
and rector,
the same as I am,
a church vicar and priest.
Uh, my half-brother was also a priest,
which had already died recently.
And then there's myself.
So that's three of us ordained
within one family.
[gentle music playing]
[Pamela] We got together
and we got married in 1974.
And, um, we were about two years
in the parish that he was in then,
when he was cured.
And then we moved to a suburb of Dublin,
a place called Whitechurch,
which is simply beautiful.
We're very close to the city centre,
we're beside the mountains.
We're not far from the coast.
[Horace] That's where we are.
[Horace] He'd...
He had lovely, long, curly hair.
He didn't want to get his hair cut.
And we would say to him,
"Ian, when will we get your haircut?"
And he would say,
"No, not get haircut. Not get haircut."
[Pamela] Ian,
when will we get your haircut?
- [Horace] Tomorrow.
- We'll get your haircut tomorrow.
No, not get haircut.
- Will we?
- No.
- But I want your hair cut.
- It's no.
Um, I am just so incredibly proud of Ian
and I am so glad that he's my brother
and best friend.
[man groans]
[gentle music playing]
[man speaking in Italian]
[Andrew speaking in Gaelic]
[in English] What's a family? Well,
family for me is my family. [chuckles]
So, my parents, my three amazing brothers.
Um, and I think
that we're all very different
and we've all been fostered to grow
in different ways
and we've ended up doing
really different things.
And so, while Ian is a professional
sports person, I'm not sporty at all.
I can't catch a ball. But that's
the beauty of family, I suppose.
That we're kind of a patchwork quilt
of different things.
[gentle music playing]
[waves crashing]
[Andrew] They say the cold
is good for you.
It gets rid of all those deadly diseases.
[Pamela] Oh, is he going in again?
[lively piano music playing]
I started playing rugby when I was about
12, when I went to secondary school,
and Ian would've come to all my matches,
um, with my mum.
The family were all as very supportive
to watch each other's matches.
- [man 1] Come on, Callum!
- [indistinct chattering]
[man 1] Nice pull. Nice pull.
[man 2] Align left!
[man 1] Get him up.
Uh, I remember very vividly
Ian going through the stage of life
when he used to dress up
as Batman and Robin.
Um, and he had some very embarrassing
outfits that he used to...
to be dressed up as various superheroes,
running up and down the side lines
of my rugby matches.
Um, and all the girls that were standing
watching the match
used to sort of dote upon him
and look after him
as he was dressed up as Batman and Robin.
[indistinct conversation]
[Philip] And I would've always thought
it was very warm and friendly.
In later years,
Ian has sort of reflected upon the things
that he was probably very frustrated
by having an older brother,
and all the natural healthy parts
of sibling rivalries and all the rest
were probably there.
Uh, we shared a bedroom
and, uh, therefore, uh,
you know, always played sports
and everything together.
So it was...
Uh, I always understood it as a good,
uh, healthy relationship.
[men speaking indistinctly]
[Ian, in English] So Philip and myself
actually shared a room.
I would go to bed maybe at ten o'clock
and he would wake me up at 11
and make me believe it was breakfast time.
So I had to go downstairs
and I started having my breakfast
at like, 11, and my dad would say to me,
"Ian, what are you doing?"
And I say, "Oh, well,
I'm getting ready for school."
Because this would be winter time
and it would still be dark.
And then I realised
that it was actually still night time
and I had about another seven hours sleep
ahead of me, so... [chuckles] ...yeah.
And the line's actually twirling
by the wind.
Good ball. Good jump. Good clean take.
At the line. Scrum-half. Out-half.
Lovely pass. Lovely pass. We got it!
We got the ball.
They'll never know who. He runs.
He runs, and the red's side shout, "Boo!"
[chuckles]
He goes... Try two points. Good play.
- [woman 1] The entrance to Columba's.
- [woman 2] Oh, right.
[woman 1] I think it's lovely.
I'm sure it'll be lovely.
[gentle music playing]
[man singing in Gaelic]
[Ian, in Italian]
Since I started going to school,
the school is called St. Columba's
College, at the age of 12,
I took up rugby
and played in my first team, under 13.
The most important things for me
were to play with my friends,
to develop some discipline
and to lose some weight...
[laughs] ...because I was kind of fat
at that age.
- ["Here I Am, Lord" playing]
- [all] I will go, Lord
If you lead me
I will hold...
[Paul] Um, so I first came across
Ian McKinley when he was 13.
But he always loved it
and worked very hard.
Uh, he would always be the first person
to come to the pitch
and very often would be the last person
to leave.
Uh, always doing extra things
and loving it, so...
He had a lot of talent, a lot of skills.
[gentle music playing]
[boy coughs]
[Liam] He was just a normal boy.
Very quiet on Sundays in church
when he was lined up with his family.
He played sport all the time.
Um, and then he arrived in St. Columba's
like his brother Philip, Andrew.
And Philip and Ian were both
in my boarding house.
So I was a house master, so I was in
charge of every aspect of their lives.
Sort of a biding memory of Ian was,
in the first boarding house we were in,
was that he had a locker
in a very small corridor...
[clicks tongue] ...and he spent
a lot of time looking at his books
in that corridor.
But I'm not so sure
how interested he was in his books.
And, um, his mother Pam made me her ally,
because I played sport
and I was a teacher,
and she felt that I was going to get Ian
to be more interested in his books
than sport.
We both failed.
[Philip] This stands out...
[Liam] A community is hugely important,
I think, in life.
To be part of a community,
especially now in this very, um...
It's a very global society.
You can get people moving
from one city to another and a job.
If you come for the sport, actually,
it can anchor you in a community.
Well, he was always part of a very small
sort of, um, micro-community.
He was in a small, little local parish.
He ca-- He went to a small
local parish school.
He came to a very small boarding school.
So we were very, um... very collective.
We really sort of...
All were caring communities.
And Ian I think fitted in there,
because he is a very caring individual.
He's, um, somebody
who I always felt was shy.
Sometimes, personally, diffident, but he
was very confident in his own ability,
but in a very humble, understated way.
Um, and he was someone who was starting
to play a professional modern sport.
But that-- He played that sport
with traditional values of honesty,
integrity, teamwork.
You know, the team being more important
than the individual.
I always admired that.
He never really forgot
where he came from either.
[players talking indistinctly]
[Liam, in English] Just seeing people
growing and knowing they will grow.
And with somebody like Ian,
we're all incredibly proud of him.
Personally, did I do that much
to help him? I don't think so, really.
[indistinct chattering]
[woman whistles, speaks indistinctly
in Italian]
[Liam, in English] Rugby is a huge pull.
It's sort of...
I think, in rugby-- in rugby,
there's a place for everyone.
Whatever size you are,
whatever skills you have,
there are different sort of...
different skills
that are required
from every single person.
You can be fast,
you can be tall, short, large, small.
And I think, really,
it's such a physical sport
that you have to rely on the person
right beside you.
The person right beside you isn't doing
their job, you're going to get hurt.
[players talking indistinctly]
[Liam, in English] So our teams
don't always win
but they're expected to participate.
It's a culture of participation.
And therefore, you have to go out,
learn how to lose... well,
and then when you win,
you seize those moments.
[players speaking indistinctly]
[Horace, in English] When Ian
was a little boy, uh,
like way back three, four,
five years of age,
he had a very good balance
in terms of with the football and so on.
It was quite exceptional for his age.
That was when I first noticed he was born
with this sporting gift.
Um, and it was quite exceptional
for his age. And, um... [clicks tongue]
You know, he was really passionate
about playing any-- all sorts of games
and sports as well.
But his coordination and balance
were exceptional.
He played hockey.
Um, he played our national sport
in Ireland, Gaelic football.
Very, very good at that.
And, uh, when he went
to secondary school, age 12,
he started to play rugby,
which is what he always wanted to do.
And soon as they saw him play
up in the school,
which wasn't particularly a rugby school.
In Dublin, we have a lot of schools that
are very rugby-focused, but this wasn't.
We just wanted him to get a nice,
rounded education.
If he was particularly good,
he could come to the top.
If not, so be it. [inhales sharply]
So, me watching him was sheer delight
because that's what he wanted to do.
And all I want to do in my life
is to have my children happy,
no matter what they do.
My four children do
totally different things
and as long as they're happy, I'm happy.
- Hi, Mum.
- Mm...
- Bye. See you later.
- Yeah.
- Daddy. See you.
- Good luck.
Bye-bye.
And here he is with some very famous
rugby people when he was a little boy.
This is Mick Galwey.
And this is, uh,
the Leinster number ten
at the time, Contepomi.
And there was Jonathan Sexton after him.
And that's the very first photo--
photograph.
[Philip] But not only did he get
introduced to Gaelic football.
He got introduced to doing a sport
at a very high level.
And he happened to come across
a very excellent team.
So Ian joined Kilmacud Crokes
and in this county, particularly,
Kilmacud Crokes' name is revered
because they're really one
of the top club sides.
And not only that. He happened to get in
with an exceptionally talented group
of players
and a very wonderful, committed,
and inspirational coach.
And that group of players excelled
and excelled
and reached a competition
called the Peil in Galway.
And, uh, they managed to win
this national competition
as the best club at their age level.
His rugby flourished, and he...
he suddenly went on
a very fast trajectory.
From school,
which is not a very high level,
he went immediately into provincial rugby,
uh, he went into representing Ireland
at the underage levels,
all in a very, very short period of time.
Uh, so, he went from, uh...
Within a sort of a 12-month period,
he catapulted at an extraordinary rate.
And that showcased his talent
and his ability.
So he played for about two years
at this very high level,
and all of it was developmental
and all of it was breaking the ceiling
to get into a higher and higher level.
And every time the bar was set,
he would raise his standard
and he would rise
to the challenge of, uh, this, uh...
whatever standard
he was being pushed towards.
Oh, there we go.
That was his dream.
To get something with his name on it.
And he just was contracted with Leinster.
[Ian, in Italian]
I grew up in the under 13 team.
I continued with the under 15,
then with the under 18.
After high school,
I joined Leinster provincial team.
So, I became a "professional."
I joined Leinster right
after my last exam.
It was hard, because I had to train
with all the famous players
I looked up to on TV.
It was a great experience for me.
- [crowd chanting on TV]
- [Andy] Which is probably 15 years, mate.
Um, we met enrolment day
in St. Columba's.
And I've been friends with him
ever since, really.
Um, so we're ten years out of school
this year.
[people cheering and applauding]
[Andy] It was the Ireland under 20 game
in Paris. Um...
So we were there,
just myself and three other friends.
Um...
Yeah, we've pretty much seen him through
one of my prouder moments in life.
[gentle music playing]
I think it's Leinster A against Plymouth.
Ian is number ten.
Fly-half or out-half.
And his role is really like a conductor
for an orchestra.
[Pamela] He has to call the moves
at each stage,
defensively and in attack.
It's all planned.
Every move is planned, apparently.
[Ian, in Italian] I played with Ireland
at World Rugby Under 20
Championship in 2009.
Awesome experience as well.
We played against New Zealand U20.
At the last game,
I was captain against Samoa.
I'm not going to tell you
the final score. [laughs]
[man shouting on TV]
[men shouting in unison]
That's me.
[shouting continues]
[Philip, in English] Perfect.
Thank you so much.
[man over phone]
No worries. Talk to you later.
[piano music playing]
Philip is a wonderful communicator.
He's able to transfer his message
across to people and his charity.
He really opens up himself and his family,
his home, to other people.
Um, I take inspiration from him
to try to be, honestly, a better person.
Um, he has time for anyone and everyone.
- [keyboard clacking]
- [mouse clicks]
[indistinct chattering]
[Ian] Even the job that he does now,
uh, being a chaplain in the third
biggest university in Ireland,
you've got about 15,000 students there,
and I certainly know that a lot of those
students would know him, know of him.
Um, he doesn't ask for anything in return.
He just wants to see people happy.
[overlapping voices]
[speaking in Italian] Come on in.
[in English] Come for some soup.
Italy is our theme today for...
[students chattering indistinctly]
[Philip, in English] I'm a chaplain
here in Dublin City University.
I am based in an interfaith centre,
so I get to work with...
Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Hindu,
everybody.
Um, all the student and staff body,
in all variety of different ways.
My main kind of work is feeding people,
um, with nourishing food
and tea and coffee.
And that really is hospitality,
and hospitality is the absolute heart
of the whole thing.
Just making people feel welcome.
And you do not know the problems
and troubles somebody's experiencing.
[singing in Italian]
[players clamouring]
[players shouting indistinctly]
[Ian, in English] Yeah, 2010, sort of
where my... my life changed and...
So I was just playing a game
with my university called UCD,
and by two minutes after the game,
I just went into a rock.
[players clamouring]
[Philip] And it was this one day,
UCD were playing Lansdowne.
Yeah, I remember arriving in the Bowl
in Belfield where the game took place.
And the game had just kicked off,
and I was kind of ambling,
uh, towards the... the side of the pitch
just to watch it.
I remember seeing Ian go into the rock.
He took a crash ball.
He was playing number 12,
inside centre, that day,
which is the position I used to play.
[rain pattering]
But twelves can be sometimes
more physical and aggressive
and they would do this kind of move.
And he took it into a crash ball,
he fell down,
and I saw there was a fight emerged,
and Ian was thrashing around.
Now I knew some of the players
on both sides.
And I saw him fighting with these players
that he knew very well.
And it didn't make too much sense to me,
but I then saw him
pulled to the side line.
And I didn't want to kind of make a fuss
or I didn't know if--
Because players get pulled off,
sometimes, you know, they might be fiery,
and the coach might want them
to cool down or...
You know, I just didn't know
why he's been taken off.
You can also have blood substitutes
where you're, um, taken off
just to have some blood mended.
And unfortunately,
a teammate stood on my... my face,
and his stud on his boot
went into my eyeball,
and unfortunately, it burst.
And, uh, walking up
to where was kind of the players area
and somebody kind of asked me,
you know, "Is everything okay?"
"Why are you walking
into the players area?"
And I just said, "I'm Ian's brother."
And they said, "No, come."
And he was on the floor and he had his
hand over his face like this,
and he was furious.
He was raging.
I can't remember his exact words,
but he was just, um...
just so, so angry.
Something had happened.
And he said words like, "My eye!
They've done something to my eye!"
[blinker clicking]
[Pamela exhales] It was my birthday,
and I was meeting friends
and I thought, "Well, I'm entitled
to have a half a day with my friends."
I dropped him to the game,
I went to have lunch with my friends.
And, uh, I got a text.
I was going back at halftime.
Got a text from Philip, who was there,
to say Ian is injured.
And I just said, "Oh, dear, what is it?"
And he said, "It's his eye."
But I wasn't worried,
because I sort of thought it was up here.
And I said, "Okay, what do you want me
to do? I'm coming."
So he said, "We're going by ambulance."
And I said-- I thought, "Oh."
"To the nearest hospital."
So I said, "I'll meet you there."
It was the first ever game my mum
had missed. [chuckles]
So she was obviously a bit upset,
but my brother and my dad were there,
took me to the hospital,
and there I had emergency surgery
on my... on my eye.
Uh, I remember everyone in the accident
and emergency turning and staring
at this big rugby player walking still
in his full rugby boots,
clink, clink, clink,
across the accident and emergency.
He was brought almost straight through.
So this is the Royal Victoria
Eye and Ear Hospital
where Ian was brought
after his initial assessment
in Vincent's Hospital.
I drove him here actually.
[calm music playing]
Ian decided in-- beside me
that he'd have a look.
He put the mirror down and said--
He had a big cotton wool thing.
To see what this is like,
and he lifted it up.
Now, Philip had seen it.
And he pulled down the sun visor
and lifted up the mirror
and he lifted off his... his eye patch,
and he looked in and he was horrified,
'cause it was... it was a stew.
The eye was a stew.
It looked nothing normal.
Nothing that is normally in an eye
was in any of its normal places.
So he went into the operating theatre,
uh, late into the night.
In the morning then, he was told that...
that he would have, uh,
I think, a year off rugby,
um, that it would take a significant
amount of time without moving.
He'd have to just sit in his hospital bed,
he'd have to just sit at home.
He... He had this whole plastic goggle
shield over his eye.
Um, so his whole life,
from going from the high physicality
to just suddenly crashing down
to point zero
where you have to be still
and you can't allow infection.
And especially when he's this big,
strong, burly guy
and he's restricted down, uh,
to such minimalism.
It was a cra-- crashing blow.
But I remember that night,
leaving the accident and emergency,
my dad was really, really furious
that this had happened, and...
we weren't clear at the time.
Was it malicious? Was it on purpose?
Uh, that somebody had done this to him.
And as we were driving home,
we received a phone call from his coach,
and the coach said
he had watched back the film
and indeed, it's clear
that it was an accident.
That person then came in to see Ian,
uh, three days later
and was very gracious in doing so
and said to him,
"I was the one that did it."
So it was a freak accident.
[scoffs] It's part of the challenge
of physical sport is... is...
There's always a risk when you run out
and do any form of sport,
and this was just a piece of metal
in the wrong place at the wrong time,
and a foot, and a face, and an eye,
all clashing in the wrong moment
in the wrong way.
[in Italian]
After the game, I was at the hospital,
and this guy came to visit me
three or four days later.
I think he was very brave.
It must have been hard for him.
At the beginning, I was mad.
I was asking myself, "How come?"
[in English] Uh, very clumsy.
Very, very clumsy with your feet, but...
[in Italian] At the end,
I wrote him a letter that said,
ehm...
"Look, we must accept what happened
and go on."
"We cannot go back and change the past."
"It happened. Let's move on."
- [thunder crashing]
- [rain pattering]
[in English]
So I stayed a week in the hospital.
Uh, the surgery went well.
I was able to, um, get my vision back.
I was able to start to see light,
which was really good,
but my eye was very sore.
Uh, I had to have drops in
at every 30 minutes, every hour
through the day and the night,
and I just sleep in certain positions,
so it was very uncomfortable.
Uh, one of my questions to the doctor was,
"When can I go back and play rugby?"
He said, "Calm down.
There's long, long way to go
'cos it's a very particular injury."
Um, so I was told a year of being, um...
I won't say out of activity,
but just a year of being controlled
and not going to the gym or doing anything
that would put pressure on my eye.
And I was able to actually get back
six months after the initial accident,
which was really, really good.
I was very happy.
[people cheering, applauding]
Yeah, then the... the year went on,
uh, I was playing with Leinster,
a really successful team
under Joe Schmidt,
who's a really, really, uh, well-renowned,
famous rugby coach.
It was his first year at Leinster.
And things were going well,
and then in 2011,
I was playing a game
with the Leinster second team,
and unfortunately, I just remember seeing
we scored a try,
and I was looking at the post,
trying to kick the ball over,
and I just remember the ball
was... was really fuzzy.
It wasn't what I-- It just wasn't normal.
And I knew something was up.
I developed a cataract
which had to require to do operations.
And then, unfortunately,
a few weeks later, my retina detached,
which I was told, usually, six months
after a traumatic injury,
uh, you're clear,
you're out of the danger zone.
But this happened 18 months after,
so the doctor found it quite strange.
And unfortunately,
I had my... my fourth operation,
and that was the most painful one.
But unfortunately, my tear was too--
was three times bigger
than what could be repaired,
so I lost complete vision in my left eye.
[speaking in Italian]
[chuckles, in English] Very, very sad.
Um...
[in Italian] My whole world broke down.
- [Horace, in English] Oh, alright. Open...
- [Pamela] And just go?
[in Italian] Thanks to my family
and my now wife,
I managed to handle that tough period.
[in English] I think it's... it's the big
question of life, isn't it, itself?
It's not just, you know...
This story, it's, in many ways,
it's pretty much everyone's story.
Um, sometimes,
we've all got to ask, you know, "Why do...
Why do bad things happen to good people?"
That's a... That's a really big question,
isn't it?
Uh, I don't know any smart answers to it.
Uh, I think you can root around
in your faith, but you get...
The best you get is people like Paul
who say that now we only know one part.
One part, you know.
Now we only see in a mirror.
Then we shall see perfectly,
then we shall know fully.
Uh, so I would like to think we gave Ian
the best of attendance and presence
that we could
in what was a very traumatic thing,
obviously for him, primarily,
uh, but also, in another sense,
for us and the family as well.
Um, I've noticed--
You know, I'm a long time,
and happily-- very happy and fulfilled
in this job as an Anglican priest,
uh, but people seem to think
you have extra resources.
[Pamela] Well, that's true.
[Horace]
They seem to think you have something.
Well, of course, you are no different
from anyone else.
You're as human as anyone else.
[indistinct chattering]
Um, but I think, as... as Pam has outlined
about the mother is... is particularly...
You know, it's particularly painful
for her.
As soon as you're handed a baby, cries,
you try and...
the wind, or you'll try and feed it,
or get it-- make it warmer.
Your baby, as I said earlier,
no matter whether he's 12, 22, 42,
is still your baby.
[Ian, in Italian]
My wife, my friends, my family,
they are essential.
I could not achieve any of my goals.
When I see other unfortunate people,
I feel lucky.
I am a man, first of all, with a brain.
Two legs, two arms and one eye.
It doesn't change much for me.
I see slightly less.
But I am very lucky.
[Horace, in English] And then, even his...
some years in Udine here in Italy,
it must have been tough for him.
And when he's alone,
we try to come out a bit.
Uh, but he created a new life
for himself there.
And um... And then, uh, thankfully,
due to the goggles,
was able to get playing again.
And, uh, that was almost...
You know, it was almost a resurrection
of the story in a sense.
[crowd cheering]
[in Italian] Besides playing rugby,
I really like training young people.
I got a call from Udine, Italy.
I accepted also
because I got a little bored of Ireland.
I was willing to experience something new.
They offered me a three-year contract.
[crowd cheering, applauding]
[Ian, in English]
I was really, really happy in my job.
Like, it was everything
I sort of wanted it to be,
working with young kids,
working with adults.
Um, but it was difficult to learn
a new language, learn a new culture,
first time living with your...
your partner,
uh, away from your family and friends,
is really difficult.
Um, so myself and Cordelia had our...
had our problems, definitely.
Um, and... and I remember Philip
came over, my brother came to visit me
and saw that I was, you know, doing well,
but I was, you know,
not the same sort of person.
Um, and I had a little moment with him
and a little--
I never-- I don't like to say breakdown,
but I had a breakdown of...
[scoffs] I had a...
I had a good cry with him.
Uh, like any good brother,
he took me under his arm
and... and listened to what I had to say,
and he... he... he knew when someone
at the age of 21 has to retire
from something that you've loved to do
from when you were three
years of age
is something really difficult to take.
[announcer on TV speaking in Italian]
[Philip]
We said, "Let's do a day trip to Trieste."
But the trip to Trieste was on a Saturday.
The scores of the various matches
had started to filter through,
um, from the different matches.
And there was one particular match,
his former team, Leinster,
and they had...
had an overwhelming victory.
And many of his contemporaries
had performed exceptionally well.
So this kind of barometer of "Gosh,
that's where I would... would have been
if I wasn't here today."
"If the eye accident
had not happened,
that's where I would have been,
in amongst this great, famous,
wonderful, uplifting victory."
"And yet, here I am with...
only with my brother." [chuckles]
So when we got to Trieste, we walked
around and visited some of the sites,
saw James Joyce's statue.
And as we walked along,
we were just walking and talking,
and he just said, "I can't do it anymore."
And he broke down into floods of tears.
And I put my arm around him
and we kept walking,
and he was just very, very upset.
He was at a really low, low ebb.
Uh, and it was just that realisation.
You have to see it for yourself.
You have to put your arm around them
to know,
"Gosh, something needs to happen."
"We need a change.
Some shift needs to happen."
I took that as meaning
a call to intervention,
a call to, um... to a change.
Uh, when we went back to his club,
Leonorso,
when he was, um, training
the under 16 team,
after the match, uh,
there was a kick ball--
There were kicking the ball around
and passing the ball around,
just very casually,
and they gave it to Ian and they said,
"Will you kick, uh, the sidebar?"
And from about the halfway line,
he did a drop kick and it hit the sidebar.
And they all laughed and they said,
"No, no, no, not the sidebar."
"The... The... The vertical bar."
And he got another ball and he kicked
and he hit the-- from a huge distance.
I... I was just flabbergasted
how a guy with one eye
can almost hit a... a penny from 50 yards.
[Ian] So I think he went back to Ireland
with... with this thought in his mind,
thinking, I have to do something
for my brother.
That's the sort of person Philip is.
Uh, we got in contact with various people,
various different avenues.
And the beauty about Ireland
is that it's such a small country.
Four million people, but you might as well
know everyone. [chuckles]
[upbeat music playing]
[piano music playing]
[Philip] Don't look. I have--
Give me the keys.
One of the things that really affected me
on that trip was visiting an exhibition
of Leonardo da Vinci's creations.
So taking his artistic sketches
of his mechanical engineering,
his early kind of helicopters
and water systems
and machine guns,
and all these kind of things,
and recreating them.
But it just kind of taught me
that where you have an obstacle,
like gravity and getting water up a hill,
there are so many technical
and technological solutions
to whatever the said problem is.
So when I scratched the surface
and with this kind of Leonardo da Vinci
thinking in the back of the head,
"Look, there's surely a technical solution
to this visual problem."
We formulated a plan of action.
First thing we needed to do, was figure
out somebody to design the goggles.
And then we needed to figure out
somewhere that the design--
that the goggles would be made.
And then third, we had to figure out
if they could be permitted to be used.
[players clamouring]
[player] Run!
[in Italian]
The goggles arrived on January 1st, 2014.
[chuckles] I bought the first pair.
At that time, the team was playing
in Serie C championship
and taking a Christmas break.
So I started playing in the championship
in March 2014.
I remember that game very vividly,
my mum came to see me.
That game was my first one
after three years of retirement.
Very important.
It had rained the day before
and also rained during the game.
It's bad to play on a muddy field.
But I didn't even realise.
I went on the field and tried the goggles.
[in English] They were safe for me,
they were safe for other players.
[in Italian] So, they worked pretty well.
We played the game
and I left the field covered with mud.
I smelled bad, but we won. We cried.
Very huge moment.
[in English] And I was in the best
physical shape I've ever been in my life.
I trained like an animal to try and prove
that I can...
that I can be where I was and get better.
[panting]
But immediately, they started to get
the attention of some of the higher clubs,
particularly, uh,
in the Eccellenza league in Italy.
And within the end of that season,
a short season,
he was picked up for Viadana rugby club
where he played for two years.
And in the latter period of his time
at Viadana, he was the club captain.
He captained the team.
Uh, so his career just shot back up.
And from Viadana,
he was signed for Treviso.
[Ian] And further on then,
I was signed by Benetton Treviso,
which is where I am now
in this lovely changing room.
Uh, this is where I train every day.
And I've been here now...
This is my third year.
[in Italian] When the others
didn't give me an opportunity,
Italy always stood by me.
At Udine, they gave me a job opportunity.
Viadana let me play on a semi-pro level
which is not an easy thing
for a half-blind fly, half-player.
It wasn't easy for them.
But they did it.
And Zebre gave me the challenge
to play in PRO12.
And Benetton signed me.
[announcer in Italian] Treviso has
sped up over these last few minutes.
That tackle by Ioane probably helped.
It has given new energy
to the team and they say,
"We can do it, too.
We're convinced we can do it."
And it might have been that little thing,
flipping that switch,
that made Treviso's manoeuvre faster.
They can do it because they just do it.
[Ian, in Italian] I use the goggles
because on my third game
after my comeback,
I had a little accident.
One of my adversaries, unfortunately,
put his fingers in my good eye.
I was afraid another accident
would happen,
the goggles are for protection.
[woman, Ian speaking in Italian]
[in English]
Um, the goggles are a trial basis,
so not every country signed up
to the trial.
So there were three countries
that didn't sign up,
which was England, France, and Ireland.
Yeah. So Italy were the first country
in the world to sign up to them,
which was fantastic, 'cos you could play
and, you know, see if they worked.
And if they didn't work,
then you can just stop.
So World Rugby introduced this trial.
Um, so as I started going up the ladder,
I needed to play games outside of Italy.
So it came a moment
when I played for Zebre
that, uh, I played the first game
in Italy, so that was okay,
against a Welsh team,
and then I was asked to play the next game
in Ireland in Galway.
I wrote to the IRFU,
and, uh, I was refused entry
to play that game.
So that was, yeah, difficult to take
because that's your...
that's your home country, uh, telling you
you can't play.
[Pamela] Coming into...
So, Ian then, um, took this as--
very seriously
and he set about,
along with the whole of the family,
this big campaign.
We said, "Right, here's a guy
that's overcome adversity,
he's come back against all the odds,
and now he's coming back
to his home country to play,
and they will not let him play
because of the goggles."
[Emma] We could see that there was--
he was being discriminated against
because he wasn't, um, allowed
to fulfil his livelihood.
So we went about, I suppose a campaign
as a family.
Um, we came together with all of our ideas
and we worked out, "This is the problem
and how are we gonna come up
with creative solutions to fix that."
So, we put our heads together.
We met, I think, every week,
or every couple of weeks.
We kind of sat down and we almost had,
like, an agenda of things we'd go through.
Um, and we would kind of assign roles
to different people within the family
according to our different strengths
as to what we could achieve.
So, um, there were a number
of different obstacles
that we... we knew we had to overcome.
Um, one was, for example,
around kind of the legal side of things,
so we spoke to--
Uh, and we got some information around
Ian's kind of legal... the legal, um...
the legal issues, and we, um, considered--
We would, you know--
We realised Ian had--
He had, essentially, a disability
and he was being discriminated against.
We also-- We had been told
that there could be like
some kind of an insurance issue
with the fact that Ian-- if Ian
was playing with these goggles, they--
that the insurance premiums
would go way up and will be far too much.
Um, we also went and spoke
with plastic surgeons,
various other medical professionals,
um, opticians and ophthalmologists.
And we came up with a campaign,
a campaign plan.
So it involved, um, designing a petition
on change.org.
I think we got over 14...
around about 14,000 signatures.
And that was a... a petition
that we... we launched in Ireland.
[Pamela] Well, when we were, um...
trying to get Ian back on the pitch,
we all played our... our individual roles
in writing letters
and hounding the authorities.
Philip was dolling out, um, instructions
to everybody
as to what role they were to take.
And I was given the role of making--
It was coming up to Christmas,
so it was appropriate
that I made Christmas cakes
for all the people who'd helped us.
We had lots of people helping us
along the way.
[Emma] And at the same time as that,
we did kind of a general media campaign,
so we did a number of interviews,
we met with politicians, um, you know,
ministers for sport.
Um, we had-- The foreign minister
for justice gave us great support.
And it culminated, really, in, um,
I think making, um, a presentation
to the IRFU,
the rugby body,
um, in Ireland here
around why...
why we felt Ian should be able to use
these goggles.
But they did a kind of U-turn,
so our campaign, ultimately,
was really successful.
Well, I was given ten minutes
by the IRFU medical board
to fly over from Italy to present
the arguments as to why...
why the rugby goggles should be permitted
in... in Ireland.
[clicks tongue] And in that ten minutes,
we managed to change their decision.
Because in two days, they changed...
they changed their decision,
which was a huge, huge deal,
uh, not just for me,
but for other people in Ireland,
young kids who want to play rugby,
they can now use these goggles.
So that was a momentous occasion.
[crowd on TV cheering]
[announcer on TV] Halfway to the league.
They go in once more, back inside.
[announcer] Esposito to McKinley.
Here we go again!
McKinley just needs one pass
inside Treviso.
[Emma] You know, Ian's family
is really, really important to him.
And obviously,
Cordelia is the key person in his family.
Um, they've been together
a very long time.
They were childhood sweethearts.
And really, I think that while Ian
has great resilience,
and great strength,
and... and great resolve himself,
he also needs the support,
as we all do, of his family,
and particularly, Cordelia,
who's the absolute cornerstone to that
because she has been, um,
a consistent support to him
all along the way
and through the ups and the downs.
[Ian, in Italian]
Family is very important.
I met my wife ten years ago
at secondary school.
She is my everything.
When I had the accident,
it was a difficult time.
She helped me all the way through.
She has been my rock.
[both chuckle]
[Cordelia, in English]
I met Ian in boarding school in Dublin.
Um, I was actually living
in Northern Ireland.
My parents sent me there for two years.
And yes, I was there for two years
with him,
and we only sort of started going out
three months before the end of school.
Ian is a very kind, and generous,
and giving person.
He's incredibly... mentally strong.
Um, I think very few people
in his position
would have even considered
returning to rugby.
But his passion was so strong
and his character
that he just wouldn't take no
for an answer
and he really battled against a lot
of people and a lot of organisations.
[indistinct chattering]
My Uncle Ian is very brave.
Uh, to come back from that injury
is very strong.
Not-- No one's ever done it before.
Inspiring, yes.
[marching band music playing]
[girl] My Uncle Ian, sometimes
he can be extremely annoying,
as he always says I have a boyfriend
when I don't.
I still find that very annoying.
But I do love him a lot
'cos he's very silly like my dad.
That's where he gets it from.
Very good at playing rugby, surprisingly.
Like he'd never play rugby in his life,
but then, "Oh, wow, he's amazing."
And I don't really watch rugby,
but my dad usually screams
when they-- Ian scored a try or something.
So I come running and I go, "What? What?"
So that's rugby in our house.
Yeah, I was... I was the best man
at his wedding.
Um, he's gonna be the best man
at... at mine.
You can rely on him. That, I think,
is very hard to find in people.
Um, somebody that you know if I asked him
for anything tomorrow, he'd be there.
You can tell a lot about a person
by the people he keeps around him.
And I think Ian has great people
around him.
Um, I think his family has been brilliant,
Cordelia, like I said, has been great.
I know his teammates and...
[announcer] Number 23, Ian McKinley.
[crowd cheering]
[people singing "Fratelli D'Italia"]
The word that comes to mind when you think
about rugby is brotherhood.
Um, you know, I think we go through
a lot of hard work, lot of preparation.
And, uh, you know,
it's something that we all enjoy.
A sport we're very, very fortunate
and privileged to play...
to play professional rugby and, you know,
to make friends and brothers for life.
I first arrived at the club last year,
and, um, he was actually one of
the first... one of the first boys I met.
Um, and just a great guy off the field.
Um, and, you know, with his story,
what an inspirational person
to... to play with.
A humble guy off the field
and a friendly person to be around.
[man 1, in Italian]
Ian and I met in Udine six years ago.
He had been my coach on the under 16 team
for two years.
He came to Udine after the serious
accident injury in Ireland.
He lived in my house for an entire year.
He is a brother to me.
Ian is cheerful, funny, and accurate
in every aspect.
He's a true professional.
[man 2] Ian is extremely positive,
humble, and full of energy.
Ian is a friend, a confidant.
We can talk about our lives,
not just sports.
[crowd cheering]
[Ian, in English]
I'm not someone who knows everything
just because
something terrible... [exhales]
had-- you know,
something bad has happened,
but I definitely have learned that you
need to have good people around you.
[crowd chanting]
[Philip]
Family is resource, it is support,
and it's... it's the building block
of society and community, and uh...
Every human hits the storms of life.
The storms are inevitable.
You cannot avoid them.
The critical thing is,
where is your life jacket?
What are the supports that get you
through those stormy periods?
And time and time again, it is family.
But really, families are heroes,
and edifiers,
and supporters, and encouragers
in so many ways, all through every day.
Uh, if we were to record it,
we'd have... so many...
You know, every... every family
is a documentary.
[mellow music playing]
[Ian] You know, everything is good
and I'm looking forward
to doing my... my job tomorrow
and being with my friends
and going home to my wife
and being able to have food
and realise how fortunate you are
to have all these things, so...
Um, if I'm to give advice to someone,
you know, surround yourself
with good people,
but just make sure that... that...
that you follow what you wanna do
and, um, you know, just make sure
you don't take no for an answer.
[player in Italian] Go, go, go!
[man chuckles]
[in Italian] Always be brave.
I know how hard it is.
There are always two roads.
One is more challenging,
the other is easier to take.
If you walk the hardest
and overcome the obstacle,
maybe you'll end up living a better life.
[singing "Fratelli D'Italia"]
[announcer, in English] And I think we're
about to have a seminal moment in the...
quite wonderful and quite incredible
career of Ian McKinley pictured there.
[crowd talking and shouting indistinctly]
He takes off all his apparel,
his head gear and his goggles,
to kick a goal.
To make the game safe,
for the Italians, for his...
newfound nation.
Ian McKinley.
[crowd cheering]
[announcer] Slot it.
[crowd applauding]
[vibrant music playing]
[rain pattering]
[indistinct chattering]
[man 1 screaming]
[man 2 grunts]
[man 1 shouting] Get on his shoulder!
[indistinct chattering]
[crowd shouting]
Alright, you're okay.
[inaudible]
[man] Uh, champion? No. I don't--
Honestly, I don't think of myself
as a champion. I just think of some--
I think of myself as someone
who wants to just give it their all.
Someone who knows that rugby is not there
for the rest of your life as a player,
so you got to maximise your time,
realise how fortunate you are
to be in this position,
to be able to do what you love doing,
and just follow your passion.
And I don't like losing.
- [people whistling]
- [vibrant music playing]
- [woman] We saw a bandage and...
- [girl] Mummy.
- [man] We got the second half.
- Come sit.
- Come say hi to Uncle Ian.
- Who is it you're playing?
- [woman 2] Um, how's South Africa?
- [boy] No.
- [laughs]
- How's the hand?
- [man 2] Look at the finger.
- Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth.
[girl] The wheels on the bus
Go round and round for nine hours
[Ian] Well, it was a long nine hours.
- Um... Hello, princess.
- Lallie, look who it is.
- [Lallie] Hello.
- Now what do you say?
I think if I'm-- 'Cause we've lost
in the last eight minutes.
- [woman 1] Aw.
- [woman 2] Yes.
[man 2] But I thought you looked
tired coming off. No?
[Ian] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then,
next game, I think is my 50th as well.
[woman 1] Oh, brilliant.
[in Italian] Did Philip tell you
that he was always late for school?
Philip would always say
that it was our dad's fault
and that Dad would drive too slow.
Thing is, driving to school
would only take us two minutes.
Philip would always wake up ten minutes
before the first class of the day...
- [woman laughs]
- ...and blame our dad.
[Ian, in English] My daddy was gonna be--
Mum's in Italy. They were following me.
- [man] Mm.
- So, yeah. It's a...
I don't mind, I just like to see them.
I don't care.
[man singing in Gaelic]
[Ian] They're building a ramp here.
There's no parking.
I think people are gonna get
public transport.
[birds chirping]
[players shouting indistinctly]
[indistinct shouting]
[man shouting indistinctly]
[Ian, in Italian]
My family is too important for me.
I am the youngest of four children.
My brother Philip and I
are ten years apart.
I've been very lucky to be brought up
by not only my mother,
but also by my sister Emma.
Emma has been incredible
and she helped me a lot
when I was a child.
I feel very lucky to have an honest
and kind family.
Um, they all keep helping me,
I feel them close to me.
My mother texts me
before and after every game.
Family is something I could never forget.
- [indistinct chattering]
- [vibrant music playing]
[man, in English] On the morning he was...
he was born,
Dad, uh, came to collect us
from June's house,
uh, to tell us that we had another, um...
[clicks tongue] ...baby brother.
- [pensive music playing]
- [babbles]
And I was absolutely over the moon
with my little brother.
[Andrew clicks tongue]
Um, he was a very good baby.
Um, he didn't sleep very well.
[baby Ian crying]
Well, we're all a bit older than Ian.
He's the baby so I was...
You know, well remember him
being born and being very young,
and I think one thing that really
sticks out for me actually is--
And kinda linking
with what he ended up doing later,
is that he used to have this...
[inhales sharply]
You remember these, like, harnesses
that you'd attach to the top of a door
and the baby would jump in them?
And, um...
[clicks tongue] He loved it.
He was in it for hours every day
and he was amazing.
He was maybe only five or six months old
but he used to kind of pull himself back
and go swinging really, like...
like just go backwards and forwards
really fast.
And I think it was probably even clear
at that stage that he was really sporty
and really kind of agile
and really physically very able.
[indistinct chattering]
[woman] She's walking there...
- [babbling]
- Well, Ian concentrates on what...
Uh, no. Pamela concentrates on walking
- but Ian concentrates on being giggly.
- [man laughs]
- [baby coos]
- Mm, isn't that nice?
Isn't that nice?
- Here you go.
- [laughter]
Yes. Well, Ian, as I say,
is nine years younger than Philip,
so Philip actually was not
very impressed when Ian was born.
[laughs] Because Philip had been the baby.
And now there was another baby,
so, um... [clicks tongue]
Philip was a little bit put out,
but he got over that.
My older two children
absolutely doted on him.
My son Andrew just adored Ian, still does.
In fact, he's Ian's godfather.
Um, and Emma, my daughter,
just became another mother to him,
because she was 12 when Ian was born.
Philip used him as a bit of a toy.
He tied him up and threw him around
and played with him in the garden,
but forgot that he was only
six months old.
Yeah, I remember we were watching--
Uh, it was myself, my brother Andrew,
my sister Emma and myself,
we were watching Home and Away,
a famous Australian television program,
and my mother and father--
I can vividly remember--
called us in, just after dinner
had finished, into the kitchen,
and they announced,
"We're gonna have another baby."
And of the three of our siblings,
with three radical different responses,
my brother Andrew broke down,
wept in tears,
hugged my mother and embraced--
thought it was the most wonderful news.
My sister I remember being a little bit
more cautious, but still very jubilant.
And me, I ran out of the house
in utter disgust.
I had been on the pinnacle.
I had my throne created
as the youngest child.
And suddenly, this--
After a long gap, this impostor
was arriving to take my throne.
And I was in denial for quite some time.
[indistinct chattering]
- [babbling]
- [Pamela giggling]
There's the famous story now,
that after three days--
And I remember it very vividly. I am...
He was in the living room with me,
and I got some skipping rope
and I decided to tie him up.
And, uh, my family came in, in horror,
at this three-day-old baby at home
tied up with a piece of rope.
[Pamela talking indistinctly]
[man on TV] Throughout 1993,
the Republic of Ireland was right
on course for World Cup qualifications
when Spain jams the script
at Lansdowne Road in October.
Now the Republic have to go
to Windsor Park,
where a win would guarantee safe passage
to the stage.
The situation began...
Yeah, Dad was a very talented sportsman.
Mum used to play hockey
up until about the time when Ian was born.
I remember going to her hockey matches.
And the two have very natural abilities.
And definitely that funnelled
most strongly into Ian
out of any of the four children.
Uh, but I remember we would play
in the back garden
and I remember just one day
he did a little move--
And nobody taught him this--
a little chip through my legs.
And it was just seeing the world
and seeing sport
in a way
that you just can't teach somebody.
So, that natural ability was very evident
and very strong early on.
[Pamela] Ready, steady, go!
[indistinct chattering]
[Pamela] Good boy.
[Emma] Come on, just run to Mummy.
Run to Mummy. Quick!
[man] Right through. Right through!
[woman speaking indistinctly]
[indistinct shouting]
[people screaming, cheering] Yeah!
Papa. Papa. Papa.
- Papa.
- Yes?
Almighty God. Praise the Lord.
- [Ian] Papa.
- [Pamela] Say your prayers, Ian.
[Ian] Amen. Praise the Lord.
Uh, my good wife, Pam, is from Dublin,
born and reared in Dublin.
I'm from the heart
of rural countryside Ireland,
a very famous county called Tipperary.
And it's a beautiful agricultural county.
[Horace] My dad was a church vicar
and rector,
the same as I am,
a church vicar and priest.
Uh, my half-brother was also a priest,
which had already died recently.
And then there's myself.
So that's three of us ordained
within one family.
[gentle music playing]
[Pamela] We got together
and we got married in 1974.
And, um, we were about two years
in the parish that he was in then,
when he was cured.
And then we moved to a suburb of Dublin,
a place called Whitechurch,
which is simply beautiful.
We're very close to the city centre,
we're beside the mountains.
We're not far from the coast.
[Horace] That's where we are.
[Horace] He'd...
He had lovely, long, curly hair.
He didn't want to get his hair cut.
And we would say to him,
"Ian, when will we get your haircut?"
And he would say,
"No, not get haircut. Not get haircut."
[Pamela] Ian,
when will we get your haircut?
- [Horace] Tomorrow.
- We'll get your haircut tomorrow.
No, not get haircut.
- Will we?
- No.
- But I want your hair cut.
- It's no.
Um, I am just so incredibly proud of Ian
and I am so glad that he's my brother
and best friend.
[man groans]
[gentle music playing]
[man speaking in Italian]
[Andrew speaking in Gaelic]
[in English] What's a family? Well,
family for me is my family. [chuckles]
So, my parents, my three amazing brothers.
Um, and I think
that we're all very different
and we've all been fostered to grow
in different ways
and we've ended up doing
really different things.
And so, while Ian is a professional
sports person, I'm not sporty at all.
I can't catch a ball. But that's
the beauty of family, I suppose.
That we're kind of a patchwork quilt
of different things.
[gentle music playing]
[waves crashing]
[Andrew] They say the cold
is good for you.
It gets rid of all those deadly diseases.
[Pamela] Oh, is he going in again?
[lively piano music playing]
I started playing rugby when I was about
12, when I went to secondary school,
and Ian would've come to all my matches,
um, with my mum.
The family were all as very supportive
to watch each other's matches.
- [man 1] Come on, Callum!
- [indistinct chattering]
[man 1] Nice pull. Nice pull.
[man 2] Align left!
[man 1] Get him up.
Uh, I remember very vividly
Ian going through the stage of life
when he used to dress up
as Batman and Robin.
Um, and he had some very embarrassing
outfits that he used to...
to be dressed up as various superheroes,
running up and down the side lines
of my rugby matches.
Um, and all the girls that were standing
watching the match
used to sort of dote upon him
and look after him
as he was dressed up as Batman and Robin.
[indistinct conversation]
[Philip] And I would've always thought
it was very warm and friendly.
In later years,
Ian has sort of reflected upon the things
that he was probably very frustrated
by having an older brother,
and all the natural healthy parts
of sibling rivalries and all the rest
were probably there.
Uh, we shared a bedroom
and, uh, therefore, uh,
you know, always played sports
and everything together.
So it was...
Uh, I always understood it as a good,
uh, healthy relationship.
[men speaking indistinctly]
[Ian, in English] So Philip and myself
actually shared a room.
I would go to bed maybe at ten o'clock
and he would wake me up at 11
and make me believe it was breakfast time.
So I had to go downstairs
and I started having my breakfast
at like, 11, and my dad would say to me,
"Ian, what are you doing?"
And I say, "Oh, well,
I'm getting ready for school."
Because this would be winter time
and it would still be dark.
And then I realised
that it was actually still night time
and I had about another seven hours sleep
ahead of me, so... [chuckles] ...yeah.
And the line's actually twirling
by the wind.
Good ball. Good jump. Good clean take.
At the line. Scrum-half. Out-half.
Lovely pass. Lovely pass. We got it!
We got the ball.
They'll never know who. He runs.
He runs, and the red's side shout, "Boo!"
[chuckles]
He goes... Try two points. Good play.
- [woman 1] The entrance to Columba's.
- [woman 2] Oh, right.
[woman 1] I think it's lovely.
I'm sure it'll be lovely.
[gentle music playing]
[man singing in Gaelic]
[Ian, in Italian]
Since I started going to school,
the school is called St. Columba's
College, at the age of 12,
I took up rugby
and played in my first team, under 13.
The most important things for me
were to play with my friends,
to develop some discipline
and to lose some weight...
[laughs] ...because I was kind of fat
at that age.
- ["Here I Am, Lord" playing]
- [all] I will go, Lord
If you lead me
I will hold...
[Paul] Um, so I first came across
Ian McKinley when he was 13.
But he always loved it
and worked very hard.
Uh, he would always be the first person
to come to the pitch
and very often would be the last person
to leave.
Uh, always doing extra things
and loving it, so...
He had a lot of talent, a lot of skills.
[gentle music playing]
[boy coughs]
[Liam] He was just a normal boy.
Very quiet on Sundays in church
when he was lined up with his family.
He played sport all the time.
Um, and then he arrived in St. Columba's
like his brother Philip, Andrew.
And Philip and Ian were both
in my boarding house.
So I was a house master, so I was in
charge of every aspect of their lives.
Sort of a biding memory of Ian was,
in the first boarding house we were in,
was that he had a locker
in a very small corridor...
[clicks tongue] ...and he spent
a lot of time looking at his books
in that corridor.
But I'm not so sure
how interested he was in his books.
And, um, his mother Pam made me her ally,
because I played sport
and I was a teacher,
and she felt that I was going to get Ian
to be more interested in his books
than sport.
We both failed.
[Philip] This stands out...
[Liam] A community is hugely important,
I think, in life.
To be part of a community,
especially now in this very, um...
It's a very global society.
You can get people moving
from one city to another and a job.
If you come for the sport, actually,
it can anchor you in a community.
Well, he was always part of a very small
sort of, um, micro-community.
He was in a small, little local parish.
He ca-- He went to a small
local parish school.
He came to a very small boarding school.
So we were very, um... very collective.
We really sort of...
All were caring communities.
And Ian I think fitted in there,
because he is a very caring individual.
He's, um, somebody
who I always felt was shy.
Sometimes, personally, diffident, but he
was very confident in his own ability,
but in a very humble, understated way.
Um, and he was someone who was starting
to play a professional modern sport.
But that-- He played that sport
with traditional values of honesty,
integrity, teamwork.
You know, the team being more important
than the individual.
I always admired that.
He never really forgot
where he came from either.
[players talking indistinctly]
[Liam, in English] Just seeing people
growing and knowing they will grow.
And with somebody like Ian,
we're all incredibly proud of him.
Personally, did I do that much
to help him? I don't think so, really.
[indistinct chattering]
[woman whistles, speaks indistinctly
in Italian]
[Liam, in English] Rugby is a huge pull.
It's sort of...
I think, in rugby-- in rugby,
there's a place for everyone.
Whatever size you are,
whatever skills you have,
there are different sort of...
different skills
that are required
from every single person.
You can be fast,
you can be tall, short, large, small.
And I think, really,
it's such a physical sport
that you have to rely on the person
right beside you.
The person right beside you isn't doing
their job, you're going to get hurt.
[players talking indistinctly]
[Liam, in English] So our teams
don't always win
but they're expected to participate.
It's a culture of participation.
And therefore, you have to go out,
learn how to lose... well,
and then when you win,
you seize those moments.
[players speaking indistinctly]
[Horace, in English] When Ian
was a little boy, uh,
like way back three, four,
five years of age,
he had a very good balance
in terms of with the football and so on.
It was quite exceptional for his age.
That was when I first noticed he was born
with this sporting gift.
Um, and it was quite exceptional
for his age. And, um... [clicks tongue]
You know, he was really passionate
about playing any-- all sorts of games
and sports as well.
But his coordination and balance
were exceptional.
He played hockey.
Um, he played our national sport
in Ireland, Gaelic football.
Very, very good at that.
And, uh, when he went
to secondary school, age 12,
he started to play rugby,
which is what he always wanted to do.
And soon as they saw him play
up in the school,
which wasn't particularly a rugby school.
In Dublin, we have a lot of schools that
are very rugby-focused, but this wasn't.
We just wanted him to get a nice,
rounded education.
If he was particularly good,
he could come to the top.
If not, so be it. [inhales sharply]
So, me watching him was sheer delight
because that's what he wanted to do.
And all I want to do in my life
is to have my children happy,
no matter what they do.
My four children do
totally different things
and as long as they're happy, I'm happy.
- Hi, Mum.
- Mm...
- Bye. See you later.
- Yeah.
- Daddy. See you.
- Good luck.
Bye-bye.
And here he is with some very famous
rugby people when he was a little boy.
This is Mick Galwey.
And this is, uh,
the Leinster number ten
at the time, Contepomi.
And there was Jonathan Sexton after him.
And that's the very first photo--
photograph.
[Philip] But not only did he get
introduced to Gaelic football.
He got introduced to doing a sport
at a very high level.
And he happened to come across
a very excellent team.
So Ian joined Kilmacud Crokes
and in this county, particularly,
Kilmacud Crokes' name is revered
because they're really one
of the top club sides.
And not only that. He happened to get in
with an exceptionally talented group
of players
and a very wonderful, committed,
and inspirational coach.
And that group of players excelled
and excelled
and reached a competition
called the Peil in Galway.
And, uh, they managed to win
this national competition
as the best club at their age level.
His rugby flourished, and he...
he suddenly went on
a very fast trajectory.
From school,
which is not a very high level,
he went immediately into provincial rugby,
uh, he went into representing Ireland
at the underage levels,
all in a very, very short period of time.
Uh, so, he went from, uh...
Within a sort of a 12-month period,
he catapulted at an extraordinary rate.
And that showcased his talent
and his ability.
So he played for about two years
at this very high level,
and all of it was developmental
and all of it was breaking the ceiling
to get into a higher and higher level.
And every time the bar was set,
he would raise his standard
and he would rise
to the challenge of, uh, this, uh...
whatever standard
he was being pushed towards.
Oh, there we go.
That was his dream.
To get something with his name on it.
And he just was contracted with Leinster.
[Ian, in Italian]
I grew up in the under 13 team.
I continued with the under 15,
then with the under 18.
After high school,
I joined Leinster provincial team.
So, I became a "professional."
I joined Leinster right
after my last exam.
It was hard, because I had to train
with all the famous players
I looked up to on TV.
It was a great experience for me.
- [crowd chanting on TV]
- [Andy] Which is probably 15 years, mate.
Um, we met enrolment day
in St. Columba's.
And I've been friends with him
ever since, really.
Um, so we're ten years out of school
this year.
[people cheering and applauding]
[Andy] It was the Ireland under 20 game
in Paris. Um...
So we were there,
just myself and three other friends.
Um...
Yeah, we've pretty much seen him through
one of my prouder moments in life.
[gentle music playing]
I think it's Leinster A against Plymouth.
Ian is number ten.
Fly-half or out-half.
And his role is really like a conductor
for an orchestra.
[Pamela] He has to call the moves
at each stage,
defensively and in attack.
It's all planned.
Every move is planned, apparently.
[Ian, in Italian] I played with Ireland
at World Rugby Under 20
Championship in 2009.
Awesome experience as well.
We played against New Zealand U20.
At the last game,
I was captain against Samoa.
I'm not going to tell you
the final score. [laughs]
[man shouting on TV]
[men shouting in unison]
That's me.
[shouting continues]
[Philip, in English] Perfect.
Thank you so much.
[man over phone]
No worries. Talk to you later.
[piano music playing]
Philip is a wonderful communicator.
He's able to transfer his message
across to people and his charity.
He really opens up himself and his family,
his home, to other people.
Um, I take inspiration from him
to try to be, honestly, a better person.
Um, he has time for anyone and everyone.
- [keyboard clacking]
- [mouse clicks]
[indistinct chattering]
[Ian] Even the job that he does now,
uh, being a chaplain in the third
biggest university in Ireland,
you've got about 15,000 students there,
and I certainly know that a lot of those
students would know him, know of him.
Um, he doesn't ask for anything in return.
He just wants to see people happy.
[overlapping voices]
[speaking in Italian] Come on in.
[in English] Come for some soup.
Italy is our theme today for...
[students chattering indistinctly]
[Philip, in English] I'm a chaplain
here in Dublin City University.
I am based in an interfaith centre,
so I get to work with...
Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Hindu,
everybody.
Um, all the student and staff body,
in all variety of different ways.
My main kind of work is feeding people,
um, with nourishing food
and tea and coffee.
And that really is hospitality,
and hospitality is the absolute heart
of the whole thing.
Just making people feel welcome.
And you do not know the problems
and troubles somebody's experiencing.
[singing in Italian]
[players clamouring]
[players shouting indistinctly]
[Ian, in English] Yeah, 2010, sort of
where my... my life changed and...
So I was just playing a game
with my university called UCD,
and by two minutes after the game,
I just went into a rock.
[players clamouring]
[Philip] And it was this one day,
UCD were playing Lansdowne.
Yeah, I remember arriving in the Bowl
in Belfield where the game took place.
And the game had just kicked off,
and I was kind of ambling,
uh, towards the... the side of the pitch
just to watch it.
I remember seeing Ian go into the rock.
He took a crash ball.
He was playing number 12,
inside centre, that day,
which is the position I used to play.
[rain pattering]
But twelves can be sometimes
more physical and aggressive
and they would do this kind of move.
And he took it into a crash ball,
he fell down,
and I saw there was a fight emerged,
and Ian was thrashing around.
Now I knew some of the players
on both sides.
And I saw him fighting with these players
that he knew very well.
And it didn't make too much sense to me,
but I then saw him
pulled to the side line.
And I didn't want to kind of make a fuss
or I didn't know if--
Because players get pulled off,
sometimes, you know, they might be fiery,
and the coach might want them
to cool down or...
You know, I just didn't know
why he's been taken off.
You can also have blood substitutes
where you're, um, taken off
just to have some blood mended.
And unfortunately,
a teammate stood on my... my face,
and his stud on his boot
went into my eyeball,
and unfortunately, it burst.
And, uh, walking up
to where was kind of the players area
and somebody kind of asked me,
you know, "Is everything okay?"
"Why are you walking
into the players area?"
And I just said, "I'm Ian's brother."
And they said, "No, come."
And he was on the floor and he had his
hand over his face like this,
and he was furious.
He was raging.
I can't remember his exact words,
but he was just, um...
just so, so angry.
Something had happened.
And he said words like, "My eye!
They've done something to my eye!"
[blinker clicking]
[Pamela exhales] It was my birthday,
and I was meeting friends
and I thought, "Well, I'm entitled
to have a half a day with my friends."
I dropped him to the game,
I went to have lunch with my friends.
And, uh, I got a text.
I was going back at halftime.
Got a text from Philip, who was there,
to say Ian is injured.
And I just said, "Oh, dear, what is it?"
And he said, "It's his eye."
But I wasn't worried,
because I sort of thought it was up here.
And I said, "Okay, what do you want me
to do? I'm coming."
So he said, "We're going by ambulance."
And I said-- I thought, "Oh."
"To the nearest hospital."
So I said, "I'll meet you there."
It was the first ever game my mum
had missed. [chuckles]
So she was obviously a bit upset,
but my brother and my dad were there,
took me to the hospital,
and there I had emergency surgery
on my... on my eye.
Uh, I remember everyone in the accident
and emergency turning and staring
at this big rugby player walking still
in his full rugby boots,
clink, clink, clink,
across the accident and emergency.
He was brought almost straight through.
So this is the Royal Victoria
Eye and Ear Hospital
where Ian was brought
after his initial assessment
in Vincent's Hospital.
I drove him here actually.
[calm music playing]
Ian decided in-- beside me
that he'd have a look.
He put the mirror down and said--
He had a big cotton wool thing.
To see what this is like,
and he lifted it up.
Now, Philip had seen it.
And he pulled down the sun visor
and lifted up the mirror
and he lifted off his... his eye patch,
and he looked in and he was horrified,
'cause it was... it was a stew.
The eye was a stew.
It looked nothing normal.
Nothing that is normally in an eye
was in any of its normal places.
So he went into the operating theatre,
uh, late into the night.
In the morning then, he was told that...
that he would have, uh,
I think, a year off rugby,
um, that it would take a significant
amount of time without moving.
He'd have to just sit in his hospital bed,
he'd have to just sit at home.
He... He had this whole plastic goggle
shield over his eye.
Um, so his whole life,
from going from the high physicality
to just suddenly crashing down
to point zero
where you have to be still
and you can't allow infection.
And especially when he's this big,
strong, burly guy
and he's restricted down, uh,
to such minimalism.
It was a cra-- crashing blow.
But I remember that night,
leaving the accident and emergency,
my dad was really, really furious
that this had happened, and...
we weren't clear at the time.
Was it malicious? Was it on purpose?
Uh, that somebody had done this to him.
And as we were driving home,
we received a phone call from his coach,
and the coach said
he had watched back the film
and indeed, it's clear
that it was an accident.
That person then came in to see Ian,
uh, three days later
and was very gracious in doing so
and said to him,
"I was the one that did it."
So it was a freak accident.
[scoffs] It's part of the challenge
of physical sport is... is...
There's always a risk when you run out
and do any form of sport,
and this was just a piece of metal
in the wrong place at the wrong time,
and a foot, and a face, and an eye,
all clashing in the wrong moment
in the wrong way.
[in Italian]
After the game, I was at the hospital,
and this guy came to visit me
three or four days later.
I think he was very brave.
It must have been hard for him.
At the beginning, I was mad.
I was asking myself, "How come?"
[in English] Uh, very clumsy.
Very, very clumsy with your feet, but...
[in Italian] At the end,
I wrote him a letter that said,
ehm...
"Look, we must accept what happened
and go on."
"We cannot go back and change the past."
"It happened. Let's move on."
- [thunder crashing]
- [rain pattering]
[in English]
So I stayed a week in the hospital.
Uh, the surgery went well.
I was able to, um, get my vision back.
I was able to start to see light,
which was really good,
but my eye was very sore.
Uh, I had to have drops in
at every 30 minutes, every hour
through the day and the night,
and I just sleep in certain positions,
so it was very uncomfortable.
Uh, one of my questions to the doctor was,
"When can I go back and play rugby?"
He said, "Calm down.
There's long, long way to go
'cos it's a very particular injury."
Um, so I was told a year of being, um...
I won't say out of activity,
but just a year of being controlled
and not going to the gym or doing anything
that would put pressure on my eye.
And I was able to actually get back
six months after the initial accident,
which was really, really good.
I was very happy.
[people cheering, applauding]
Yeah, then the... the year went on,
uh, I was playing with Leinster,
a really successful team
under Joe Schmidt,
who's a really, really, uh, well-renowned,
famous rugby coach.
It was his first year at Leinster.
And things were going well,
and then in 2011,
I was playing a game
with the Leinster second team,
and unfortunately, I just remember seeing
we scored a try,
and I was looking at the post,
trying to kick the ball over,
and I just remember the ball
was... was really fuzzy.
It wasn't what I-- It just wasn't normal.
And I knew something was up.
I developed a cataract
which had to require to do operations.
And then, unfortunately,
a few weeks later, my retina detached,
which I was told, usually, six months
after a traumatic injury,
uh, you're clear,
you're out of the danger zone.
But this happened 18 months after,
so the doctor found it quite strange.
And unfortunately,
I had my... my fourth operation,
and that was the most painful one.
But unfortunately, my tear was too--
was three times bigger
than what could be repaired,
so I lost complete vision in my left eye.
[speaking in Italian]
[chuckles, in English] Very, very sad.
Um...
[in Italian] My whole world broke down.
- [Horace, in English] Oh, alright. Open...
- [Pamela] And just go?
[in Italian] Thanks to my family
and my now wife,
I managed to handle that tough period.
[in English] I think it's... it's the big
question of life, isn't it, itself?
It's not just, you know...
This story, it's, in many ways,
it's pretty much everyone's story.
Um, sometimes,
we've all got to ask, you know, "Why do...
Why do bad things happen to good people?"
That's a... That's a really big question,
isn't it?
Uh, I don't know any smart answers to it.
Uh, I think you can root around
in your faith, but you get...
The best you get is people like Paul
who say that now we only know one part.
One part, you know.
Now we only see in a mirror.
Then we shall see perfectly,
then we shall know fully.
Uh, so I would like to think we gave Ian
the best of attendance and presence
that we could
in what was a very traumatic thing,
obviously for him, primarily,
uh, but also, in another sense,
for us and the family as well.
Um, I've noticed--
You know, I'm a long time,
and happily-- very happy and fulfilled
in this job as an Anglican priest,
uh, but people seem to think
you have extra resources.
[Pamela] Well, that's true.
[Horace]
They seem to think you have something.
Well, of course, you are no different
from anyone else.
You're as human as anyone else.
[indistinct chattering]
Um, but I think, as... as Pam has outlined
about the mother is... is particularly...
You know, it's particularly painful
for her.
As soon as you're handed a baby, cries,
you try and...
the wind, or you'll try and feed it,
or get it-- make it warmer.
Your baby, as I said earlier,
no matter whether he's 12, 22, 42,
is still your baby.
[Ian, in Italian]
My wife, my friends, my family,
they are essential.
I could not achieve any of my goals.
When I see other unfortunate people,
I feel lucky.
I am a man, first of all, with a brain.
Two legs, two arms and one eye.
It doesn't change much for me.
I see slightly less.
But I am very lucky.
[Horace, in English] And then, even his...
some years in Udine here in Italy,
it must have been tough for him.
And when he's alone,
we try to come out a bit.
Uh, but he created a new life
for himself there.
And um... And then, uh, thankfully,
due to the goggles,
was able to get playing again.
And, uh, that was almost...
You know, it was almost a resurrection
of the story in a sense.
[crowd cheering]
[in Italian] Besides playing rugby,
I really like training young people.
I got a call from Udine, Italy.
I accepted also
because I got a little bored of Ireland.
I was willing to experience something new.
They offered me a three-year contract.
[crowd cheering, applauding]
[Ian, in English]
I was really, really happy in my job.
Like, it was everything
I sort of wanted it to be,
working with young kids,
working with adults.
Um, but it was difficult to learn
a new language, learn a new culture,
first time living with your...
your partner,
uh, away from your family and friends,
is really difficult.
Um, so myself and Cordelia had our...
had our problems, definitely.
Um, and... and I remember Philip
came over, my brother came to visit me
and saw that I was, you know, doing well,
but I was, you know,
not the same sort of person.
Um, and I had a little moment with him
and a little--
I never-- I don't like to say breakdown,
but I had a breakdown of...
[scoffs] I had a...
I had a good cry with him.
Uh, like any good brother,
he took me under his arm
and... and listened to what I had to say,
and he... he... he knew when someone
at the age of 21 has to retire
from something that you've loved to do
from when you were three
years of age
is something really difficult to take.
[announcer on TV speaking in Italian]
[Philip]
We said, "Let's do a day trip to Trieste."
But the trip to Trieste was on a Saturday.
The scores of the various matches
had started to filter through,
um, from the different matches.
And there was one particular match,
his former team, Leinster,
and they had...
had an overwhelming victory.
And many of his contemporaries
had performed exceptionally well.
So this kind of barometer of "Gosh,
that's where I would... would have been
if I wasn't here today."
"If the eye accident
had not happened,
that's where I would have been,
in amongst this great, famous,
wonderful, uplifting victory."
"And yet, here I am with...
only with my brother." [chuckles]
So when we got to Trieste, we walked
around and visited some of the sites,
saw James Joyce's statue.
And as we walked along,
we were just walking and talking,
and he just said, "I can't do it anymore."
And he broke down into floods of tears.
And I put my arm around him
and we kept walking,
and he was just very, very upset.
He was at a really low, low ebb.
Uh, and it was just that realisation.
You have to see it for yourself.
You have to put your arm around them
to know,
"Gosh, something needs to happen."
"We need a change.
Some shift needs to happen."
I took that as meaning
a call to intervention,
a call to, um... to a change.
Uh, when we went back to his club,
Leonorso,
when he was, um, training
the under 16 team,
after the match, uh,
there was a kick ball--
There were kicking the ball around
and passing the ball around,
just very casually,
and they gave it to Ian and they said,
"Will you kick, uh, the sidebar?"
And from about the halfway line,
he did a drop kick and it hit the sidebar.
And they all laughed and they said,
"No, no, no, not the sidebar."
"The... The... The vertical bar."
And he got another ball and he kicked
and he hit the-- from a huge distance.
I... I was just flabbergasted
how a guy with one eye
can almost hit a... a penny from 50 yards.
[Ian] So I think he went back to Ireland
with... with this thought in his mind,
thinking, I have to do something
for my brother.
That's the sort of person Philip is.
Uh, we got in contact with various people,
various different avenues.
And the beauty about Ireland
is that it's such a small country.
Four million people, but you might as well
know everyone. [chuckles]
[upbeat music playing]
[piano music playing]
[Philip] Don't look. I have--
Give me the keys.
One of the things that really affected me
on that trip was visiting an exhibition
of Leonardo da Vinci's creations.
So taking his artistic sketches
of his mechanical engineering,
his early kind of helicopters
and water systems
and machine guns,
and all these kind of things,
and recreating them.
But it just kind of taught me
that where you have an obstacle,
like gravity and getting water up a hill,
there are so many technical
and technological solutions
to whatever the said problem is.
So when I scratched the surface
and with this kind of Leonardo da Vinci
thinking in the back of the head,
"Look, there's surely a technical solution
to this visual problem."
We formulated a plan of action.
First thing we needed to do, was figure
out somebody to design the goggles.
And then we needed to figure out
somewhere that the design--
that the goggles would be made.
And then third, we had to figure out
if they could be permitted to be used.
[players clamouring]
[player] Run!
[in Italian]
The goggles arrived on January 1st, 2014.
[chuckles] I bought the first pair.
At that time, the team was playing
in Serie C championship
and taking a Christmas break.
So I started playing in the championship
in March 2014.
I remember that game very vividly,
my mum came to see me.
That game was my first one
after three years of retirement.
Very important.
It had rained the day before
and also rained during the game.
It's bad to play on a muddy field.
But I didn't even realise.
I went on the field and tried the goggles.
[in English] They were safe for me,
they were safe for other players.
[in Italian] So, they worked pretty well.
We played the game
and I left the field covered with mud.
I smelled bad, but we won. We cried.
Very huge moment.
[in English] And I was in the best
physical shape I've ever been in my life.
I trained like an animal to try and prove
that I can...
that I can be where I was and get better.
[panting]
But immediately, they started to get
the attention of some of the higher clubs,
particularly, uh,
in the Eccellenza league in Italy.
And within the end of that season,
a short season,
he was picked up for Viadana rugby club
where he played for two years.
And in the latter period of his time
at Viadana, he was the club captain.
He captained the team.
Uh, so his career just shot back up.
And from Viadana,
he was signed for Treviso.
[Ian] And further on then,
I was signed by Benetton Treviso,
which is where I am now
in this lovely changing room.
Uh, this is where I train every day.
And I've been here now...
This is my third year.
[in Italian] When the others
didn't give me an opportunity,
Italy always stood by me.
At Udine, they gave me a job opportunity.
Viadana let me play on a semi-pro level
which is not an easy thing
for a half-blind fly, half-player.
It wasn't easy for them.
But they did it.
And Zebre gave me the challenge
to play in PRO12.
And Benetton signed me.
[announcer in Italian] Treviso has
sped up over these last few minutes.
That tackle by Ioane probably helped.
It has given new energy
to the team and they say,
"We can do it, too.
We're convinced we can do it."
And it might have been that little thing,
flipping that switch,
that made Treviso's manoeuvre faster.
They can do it because they just do it.
[Ian, in Italian] I use the goggles
because on my third game
after my comeback,
I had a little accident.
One of my adversaries, unfortunately,
put his fingers in my good eye.
I was afraid another accident
would happen,
the goggles are for protection.
[woman, Ian speaking in Italian]
[in English]
Um, the goggles are a trial basis,
so not every country signed up
to the trial.
So there were three countries
that didn't sign up,
which was England, France, and Ireland.
Yeah. So Italy were the first country
in the world to sign up to them,
which was fantastic, 'cos you could play
and, you know, see if they worked.
And if they didn't work,
then you can just stop.
So World Rugby introduced this trial.
Um, so as I started going up the ladder,
I needed to play games outside of Italy.
So it came a moment
when I played for Zebre
that, uh, I played the first game
in Italy, so that was okay,
against a Welsh team,
and then I was asked to play the next game
in Ireland in Galway.
I wrote to the IRFU,
and, uh, I was refused entry
to play that game.
So that was, yeah, difficult to take
because that's your...
that's your home country, uh, telling you
you can't play.
[Pamela] Coming into...
So, Ian then, um, took this as--
very seriously
and he set about,
along with the whole of the family,
this big campaign.
We said, "Right, here's a guy
that's overcome adversity,
he's come back against all the odds,
and now he's coming back
to his home country to play,
and they will not let him play
because of the goggles."
[Emma] We could see that there was--
he was being discriminated against
because he wasn't, um, allowed
to fulfil his livelihood.
So we went about, I suppose a campaign
as a family.
Um, we came together with all of our ideas
and we worked out, "This is the problem
and how are we gonna come up
with creative solutions to fix that."
So, we put our heads together.
We met, I think, every week,
or every couple of weeks.
We kind of sat down and we almost had,
like, an agenda of things we'd go through.
Um, and we would kind of assign roles
to different people within the family
according to our different strengths
as to what we could achieve.
So, um, there were a number
of different obstacles
that we... we knew we had to overcome.
Um, one was, for example,
around kind of the legal side of things,
so we spoke to--
Uh, and we got some information around
Ian's kind of legal... the legal, um...
the legal issues, and we, um, considered--
We would, you know--
We realised Ian had--
He had, essentially, a disability
and he was being discriminated against.
We also-- We had been told
that there could be like
some kind of an insurance issue
with the fact that Ian-- if Ian
was playing with these goggles, they--
that the insurance premiums
would go way up and will be far too much.
Um, we also went and spoke
with plastic surgeons,
various other medical professionals,
um, opticians and ophthalmologists.
And we came up with a campaign,
a campaign plan.
So it involved, um, designing a petition
on change.org.
I think we got over 14...
around about 14,000 signatures.
And that was a... a petition
that we... we launched in Ireland.
[Pamela] Well, when we were, um...
trying to get Ian back on the pitch,
we all played our... our individual roles
in writing letters
and hounding the authorities.
Philip was dolling out, um, instructions
to everybody
as to what role they were to take.
And I was given the role of making--
It was coming up to Christmas,
so it was appropriate
that I made Christmas cakes
for all the people who'd helped us.
We had lots of people helping us
along the way.
[Emma] And at the same time as that,
we did kind of a general media campaign,
so we did a number of interviews,
we met with politicians, um, you know,
ministers for sport.
Um, we had-- The foreign minister
for justice gave us great support.
And it culminated, really, in, um,
I think making, um, a presentation
to the IRFU,
the rugby body,
um, in Ireland here
around why...
why we felt Ian should be able to use
these goggles.
But they did a kind of U-turn,
so our campaign, ultimately,
was really successful.
Well, I was given ten minutes
by the IRFU medical board
to fly over from Italy to present
the arguments as to why...
why the rugby goggles should be permitted
in... in Ireland.
[clicks tongue] And in that ten minutes,
we managed to change their decision.
Because in two days, they changed...
they changed their decision,
which was a huge, huge deal,
uh, not just for me,
but for other people in Ireland,
young kids who want to play rugby,
they can now use these goggles.
So that was a momentous occasion.
[crowd on TV cheering]
[announcer on TV] Halfway to the league.
They go in once more, back inside.
[announcer] Esposito to McKinley.
Here we go again!
McKinley just needs one pass
inside Treviso.
[Emma] You know, Ian's family
is really, really important to him.
And obviously,
Cordelia is the key person in his family.
Um, they've been together
a very long time.
They were childhood sweethearts.
And really, I think that while Ian
has great resilience,
and great strength,
and... and great resolve himself,
he also needs the support,
as we all do, of his family,
and particularly, Cordelia,
who's the absolute cornerstone to that
because she has been, um,
a consistent support to him
all along the way
and through the ups and the downs.
[Ian, in Italian]
Family is very important.
I met my wife ten years ago
at secondary school.
She is my everything.
When I had the accident,
it was a difficult time.
She helped me all the way through.
She has been my rock.
[both chuckle]
[Cordelia, in English]
I met Ian in boarding school in Dublin.
Um, I was actually living
in Northern Ireland.
My parents sent me there for two years.
And yes, I was there for two years
with him,
and we only sort of started going out
three months before the end of school.
Ian is a very kind, and generous,
and giving person.
He's incredibly... mentally strong.
Um, I think very few people
in his position
would have even considered
returning to rugby.
But his passion was so strong
and his character
that he just wouldn't take no
for an answer
and he really battled against a lot
of people and a lot of organisations.
[indistinct chattering]
My Uncle Ian is very brave.
Uh, to come back from that injury
is very strong.
Not-- No one's ever done it before.
Inspiring, yes.
[marching band music playing]
[girl] My Uncle Ian, sometimes
he can be extremely annoying,
as he always says I have a boyfriend
when I don't.
I still find that very annoying.
But I do love him a lot
'cos he's very silly like my dad.
That's where he gets it from.
Very good at playing rugby, surprisingly.
Like he'd never play rugby in his life,
but then, "Oh, wow, he's amazing."
And I don't really watch rugby,
but my dad usually screams
when they-- Ian scored a try or something.
So I come running and I go, "What? What?"
So that's rugby in our house.
Yeah, I was... I was the best man
at his wedding.
Um, he's gonna be the best man
at... at mine.
You can rely on him. That, I think,
is very hard to find in people.
Um, somebody that you know if I asked him
for anything tomorrow, he'd be there.
You can tell a lot about a person
by the people he keeps around him.
And I think Ian has great people
around him.
Um, I think his family has been brilliant,
Cordelia, like I said, has been great.
I know his teammates and...
[announcer] Number 23, Ian McKinley.
[crowd cheering]
[people singing "Fratelli D'Italia"]
The word that comes to mind when you think
about rugby is brotherhood.
Um, you know, I think we go through
a lot of hard work, lot of preparation.
And, uh, you know,
it's something that we all enjoy.
A sport we're very, very fortunate
and privileged to play...
to play professional rugby and, you know,
to make friends and brothers for life.
I first arrived at the club last year,
and, um, he was actually one of
the first... one of the first boys I met.
Um, and just a great guy off the field.
Um, and, you know, with his story,
what an inspirational person
to... to play with.
A humble guy off the field
and a friendly person to be around.
[man 1, in Italian]
Ian and I met in Udine six years ago.
He had been my coach on the under 16 team
for two years.
He came to Udine after the serious
accident injury in Ireland.
He lived in my house for an entire year.
He is a brother to me.
Ian is cheerful, funny, and accurate
in every aspect.
He's a true professional.
[man 2] Ian is extremely positive,
humble, and full of energy.
Ian is a friend, a confidant.
We can talk about our lives,
not just sports.
[crowd cheering]
[Ian, in English]
I'm not someone who knows everything
just because
something terrible... [exhales]
had-- you know,
something bad has happened,
but I definitely have learned that you
need to have good people around you.
[crowd chanting]
[Philip]
Family is resource, it is support,
and it's... it's the building block
of society and community, and uh...
Every human hits the storms of life.
The storms are inevitable.
You cannot avoid them.
The critical thing is,
where is your life jacket?
What are the supports that get you
through those stormy periods?
And time and time again, it is family.
But really, families are heroes,
and edifiers,
and supporters, and encouragers
in so many ways, all through every day.
Uh, if we were to record it,
we'd have... so many...
You know, every... every family
is a documentary.
[mellow music playing]
[Ian] You know, everything is good
and I'm looking forward
to doing my... my job tomorrow
and being with my friends
and going home to my wife
and being able to have food
and realise how fortunate you are
to have all these things, so...
Um, if I'm to give advice to someone,
you know, surround yourself
with good people,
but just make sure that... that...
that you follow what you wanna do
and, um, you know, just make sure
you don't take no for an answer.
[player in Italian] Go, go, go!
[man chuckles]
[in Italian] Always be brave.
I know how hard it is.
There are always two roads.
One is more challenging,
the other is easier to take.
If you walk the hardest
and overcome the obstacle,
maybe you'll end up living a better life.
[singing "Fratelli D'Italia"]
[announcer, in English] And I think we're
about to have a seminal moment in the...
quite wonderful and quite incredible
career of Ian McKinley pictured there.
[crowd talking and shouting indistinctly]
He takes off all his apparel,
his head gear and his goggles,
to kick a goal.
To make the game safe,
for the Italians, for his...
newfound nation.
Ian McKinley.
[crowd cheering]
[announcer] Slot it.
[crowd applauding]
[vibrant music playing]