Rainey OB turn to Ian McKinley as head coach

The Dublin native’s wife is from Bellaghy and he was the Magherafelt club’s backs coach last season after moving to Northern Ireland but had limited time due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

McKinley steps into the Hatrick Park hot-seat after current head coach John Andrews announced he is stepping down from the role at the end of the season.

McKinley announced yesterday that he was retiring from playing, his career started with six appearances for his home province Leinster before he moved to Italy.

He had spells at Leonorse Udine, Vidanna before moving to Pro14 side Zebre as out-half cover during the 2015 World Cup and the 2016 Six Nations.

McKinley left Param to go to Benetton, playing 67 times for the Treviso-based club and scoring 223 points.

Eligible for Italy through residency, McKinley made his international debut in the Autumn internationals against Fiji and went on to win another seven caps for the Azzurri.

Rainey Director of Rugby Brian Smyth is delighted to appoint such a high-profile candidate to the head coaching role at Hatrick Park.

“It is a huge boost for the club, there were a lot of enquiries regarding the role and we had to whittle that down to five candidates for interview stage, it was clear from the interviews that Ian’s ambition and ours on and off the pitch were on the same wavelength,” stated Smyth. “We are delighted to have him on board, we had him last year as a backs coach but we didn’t have much of a season due to Covid but he impressed and we’re looking forward to big things and as a club we’ll keep progressing.

“There were 27 enquires for the role and the majority of those submitted CVs, they got the application packs and we had to score them and when we did that we had five excellent candidates that reached the interview stage, but Ian was number one at the end of the scoring system and we were very impressed.

“He has played at the highest level, he oozes class, he comes across very well and he is intelligent, he’s ambitious and we are ambitious as a club.”

Smyth paid tribute to outgoing coach Andrews, who led the club to back-to-back Qualifying League 1 titles in his first stint as well as clinching Rainey’s place in senior rugby and the All-Ireland Junior Cup.

In his second spell in Magherafelt, Andrews led Rainey into Division 2A of the All-Ireland and brought the Ulster Senior League title to Hatrick Park.

“I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to John, him and I have a very successful five-year spell at the club,” said Smyth. “We have unprecedented success with several promotions and to achieve our first piece of silverware together, John has been a massive part of the club and we wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

“In his first spell, John took our club to a new level, John came in with that player-coach mentality and we had a strong local group of players.

“Four years ago we sat down and came up with a three-year plan and we achieved it 12 months early by getting into Division 2A.”

Smyth is confident will McKinley at the helm Rainey can go from strength to strength.

“Ian and myself will target taking the club into Division 1B in the next three-to-five years, which we don’t think we should have any issue reaching,” said Smyth. “We have a fantastic squad of players, Ian will help to attract a few more local junior players to those ranks, we’ll just keep pushing on and, hopefully, more success will come from it.

“The club has a fantastic feeder group, we have 200-plus minis taking part in rugby on a Friday night, we have three of the strongest youth teams in Ulster and we are competitive at all levels.

“We have four senior teams, we have top-class facilities, we are a financially prudent club.

“We have our own club gym and 85-to-90 percent of the guys are local or came through the youth system, plus the average age of our squad last year was 24.”

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