Barny Weeden's look at Para Football

Here's a question for you. How many professional footballers do you think you could name? 5? 10? 50? 100? 200? More even? Off the top of my head, I could probably name at least 150 with their respective teams.

Now, try and name me some disability footballers. Can you honestly name any without looking online? The answer to that question, for most people, is no. In fairness, aside from the Cerebral Palsy footballers, I can't name very many, if any at all. In CP football, though, I reckon I could name most of the England Cerebral Palsy team post 2016, the current Scotland CP team, and a small bunch of US and Irish players. But then as someone with CP, I make the effort to find out about them as I look up to them for my inspiration and motivation. For anyone else who isn't looking to find out about them, CP and other disability players can easily pass below the radar. Personally, I think this needs to change and that change is long overdue.

Anderson Silva, a former UFC middleweight champion is quoted as saying “A champion is defined by the adversity he overcomes”. Whilst no disability athlete wants to be pitied, I think most would accept recognition of the fact their achievements have come in the face of more than their fair share of adversity. To my mind, disability athletes are the epitome of champions and are fantastic role models for society as a whole. In a world where the pressures of modern society, with social media pushing false images of perfection, are held responsible for a host of wider issues - including mental health problems and general apathy to strive for success - surely shifting the focus of our attention to those who overcome even lifelong disabilities to achieve sporting success would redefine our ideas of what makes a role model.

For CP footballers, I think one of the first stepping stones to achieving the recognition they deserve is creating a regular and competitive football league. I realise this will mean more of the amazing volunteers who give up their time to coach, referee and manage the league but I think this is where the professional clubs can play a key role. We need to see more professional clubs supporting and associating themselves with disability foundations. The more clubs there are the more disability players will feel confident and inspired to come forward to hopefully enable the creation of a competitive league. If you need proof that is achievable, look to Turkey and Poland which have a fully professional, 3 tier league system for Amputee Football.

The next step is to encourage more publicity. The more we talk about disability sport and the more it is reported the greater chance of people engaging in it whether by participating, watching or supporting. There are some brilliant outlets out there promoting disability sport, but at the end of the day, there aren't enough. All these smaller outlets are pulling the lead weight of a whole category of sports, when national newspapers such as the Times, Telegraph, Mail and the Guardian could quite easily publish articles at least on occasion. If they can post 130 plus pages in one day, surely one more, even if it's just one per week, isn't too much to ask.

Once people start to take more interest they will quickly realise the standard of the game, To prove just how good disability football is (and I will use CP football as the example) the England team from 2017 included players that, before playing the disability game, were some of the best young talents in the country. Take Jack Rutter, the old captain. He played for Birmingham City’s academy and suffered his brain injury on a night out celebrating making the FA Youth Cup semi-final, the penultimate stage of a trophy most players could only dream of playing in. This team also contained ex Cardiff academy player Nicky Fish, and ex Tranmere academy player Ollie Nugent (who played for them despite his CP). And even though the classification rules changed in 2019, there are still some unbelievable players in the team. Current captain Matt Crossen, Giles Moore, Liam Irons, Harry Baker, James Blackwell and lots of other great players.

If more people know about these players, who have been through such adversity, the disability football game will expand. Papers need to promote it. Football clubs need to promote it. WE need to promote it. As Jack Rutter one said: “Winners don’t wait for chances, they take them!”

This article was written by Barny Weeden as a guest writer for Why Can't We. Do you have an article that you want to share about disability sport? If you do then contact peter@whycantwe.co.uk to pitch your idea.