Italy helps restore careers of stricken half-back talents

By Brendan Gallagher
ITALIAN rugby can be proud of the part it has played in the rehabilitation – physically and mentally – of not one but two players whose careers were thought to be over following the loss of sight in one eye.
The case of Ian McKinley is the better known with the former Ireland U20 and Leinster fly-half taking refuge first at lowly Leonoro Udine in 2013 after losing the  sight in his left eye in an accident that dated back to 2010 when a University College Dublin teammate accidentally trod on his head at a ruck.
Initially he arrived in Italy as a coach but another Dublin student Johnny Merrigan designed his now trademark protective goggles and McKinley staged a low key comeback in Division Three of the Udine regional League.
He got the rugby buzz again and began to dream once more. There followed two years at Viadana where he captained the club for one season and then Italy came knocking at the end of last season as did Treviso where his now based. This week he was announced in Italy's squad for the autumn internationals.
The case of former Perpignan scrum half Florian Cazenave is less well known but similar. Cazenave had  been playing for Perpignan for six seasons when he lost the sight of his right eye in a domestic accident in July 2013. His career in France was seemingly over with the FFR laws quite explicit that no player who had lost a “bilateral organ or limb” being allowed to play in the Top 14. Again Cazenave found a lifeline in Italy at the Rugby Reggio club in Serie A where, playing with goggles similar to those used by McKinley, he made a considerable impact over the three seasons that followed.
And then the Rugby Gods smiled. Bernard Laporte became president of the FFR last year and one of the first things the former France coach did was to get the FFR's inflexible and outdated ruling altered to allow players with one eye to play professionally if considered fit enough by prospective employers. All of which has allowed Cazenave to return to the T14 with Brive this season.
While McKinley and Cazenave are both backs who rely heavily on eye-hand co-ordination – which makes their return to bigtime rugby even more admirable – there is a long tradition of one of two warriors up front making light of such a disability. Possibly the most celebrated was Springbok lock Johanne de Bruyn who ‘lost' his glass eye in a punch-up during the third Test in 1974 when the melee was stopped so both teams could look for it.
The eye was duly found and De Bruyn hardly paused for breath before clumping it back into the vacant socket and trotting off to the next lineout. At which point his opposite number Gordon Brown looked at him aghast – as he used to recall hilariously in his after-dinner speeches.
“I looked across the lineout and there was an incredible sight, Cyclops with tufts of grass and mud hanging from his eye. I stood in amazement, he just nodded. And before long the fight started again.”