Simon Brown

1. Tell us about yourself and how your school got you into wheelchair basketball?

I'm 34 years old, from London but currently living in Giesen Germany. When I was 3, I collapsed on the street when walking home from a playgroup and never walked again. I had had a virus called Transverse Myelitis which basically attack my spinal cord. As a kid in primary school I had loads of energy and loved to play sports with all my able bodied friends, I would crawl about using my hands to 'kick' the ball in football, would try and keep up at basketball, had a go with cricket etc and always had a lot of fun even though I wasn't very competitive compared to the others. Towards the end of Year 6 the school's caretaker John Card and Community Police Officer Martin Newman were running a sports club and saw how much I loved sports but thought there must be a way I can play on a more even playing field. They found a Wheelchair Basketball club not to far from us called Force WBC (now London Titans) run by Ian Laker and took me along to 'watch'. Ian wasn't having me just watch though and got me into a basketball chair within minutes of being there and suddenly I was on court with some amazing players including international star Ade Adepitan and I was just in love with the game from day one! I think the plan was to take me to try some other sports but that was it, I wanted to play wheelchair basketball every week!

2. Can you explain the rules of wheelchair basketball and the classification system?

If you've watched Basketball before you'll know the basics of the rules of Wheelchair Basketball, the court, the ball, the hoops are all the same, there is a bit more contact allowed, mainly due to the size of wheelchairs compared to able bodied people on their feet and there is no double dribble rule. Things get more interesting with classification. The idea behind wheelchair basketball's classification system is to let as many different kinds of disability take part as possible. Every player on court is classified according to their disability and given a points value of 1 (for more severe spinal cord injuries) to 4.5 (for example a lower leg amputation). The sum of all 5 players on court at the same time cannot exceed 14 points for International games or 14.5 for club games. Special deductions are given to junior or female players to encourage even greater participation, this means Wheelchair Basketball is one of the only professional sports in the world where you will see men and women competing with and against each other. If you watch a game of wheelchair basketball you will see players use different sized chairs and sit at different heights, this is usually because of classification. Lower pointers tend to sit fairly low so that they can be more balanced and stronger whereas players who have less disability tend to sit higher as they tend to have stronger cores and can use their legs to aid their balance.

3. How do you mentally prepare for a game and do you have any special rituals?

In the days leading up to a game I will study game footage on my own and with coaches and try to simplify my opponents or my game plan into 3 or 4 simple key factors, for example maybe their best scorer likes to go left more than right I can prepare myself to force the player to go right and push them out of their comfort zone. On the actual day of a game I just like to be relaxed, as a younger player I'd listen to angry music and get myself feeling really aggressive, but I realised that made no sense as I grew older, I love playing basketball and game day is what I spend all week preparing for. Just go out and enjoy it! Nowadays you will usually see me laughing and joking, maybe singing along to whatever music is being played during the warm up. The happier I'm feeling the better I'll play.

4. You continue to play for professional basketball clubs across Europe, how close do you think we are to having a professional league or club in the UK and what needs to be put in place to make this happen?

I think British Wheelchair Basketball is working hard to create a professional set up in the UK but I think it will be hard work, clubs would have to sacrifice their recreational players to make way for foreign imports and I'm not sure many are ready to do that. Also from my experience there isn't a go to way of funding a wheelchair basketball club, I have played for clubs who were funded mainly by charities through connections to a hospital, I have played for a club funded entirely by small businesses in the community, there are teams simply funded by rich owners who love the sport and I currently play for RSV Lahn Dill which is its self a business at the centre of many businesses. That being said I would love to see a professional women's league in Britain and I think there is a huge gap in the market for one of those. If they can follow and learn from the Professional Netball league has done I think that would be a great way to go.

5. How are you preparing for your season with German Club - RSV Lahn Dill?

We are slowly come out of lockdown here in Germany so in the last 2 weeks we have been allowed back into the public gyms and we are now allowed to train on our basketball court individually. Normally at this point in the year there would be no club basketball and we would be back with the national team in Sheffield, so this summer will be very interesting. My goals will be to get back into shape after lockdown and for the first couple of months just really work on fundamentals like shot mechanics, dribbling and weak hand use which often get sacrificed for game prep. Its actually a great opportunity at the moment to get better and I'm pretty excited for what I can accomplish over the next few months.

6. Do you think disability sport gets enough media attention and how can it be improved?

That's a really hard question to answer. I don't think people should ever feel a duty to watch or cover a sport if they don't like it. I don't watch Tennis so it would be hypocritical of me to say more people should be watch my sport you know? That being said, if you look at crowd attendance and viewing figures for certain events at the Paralympics you can see there is a big group of people who do like the sport and would maybe like more exposure to it. Would those people choose to watch a Wheelchair Basketball game over Premier League football? I don't know but I know here at Lahn Dill we usually have a crowd of a few thousand people as well as an audience watching on stream. I think a key factor in how the media can improve its coverage is to simply report disability sport in the same way it reports football or rugby rather than taking time to explain every little nuance in the rules. Every time I have watched a Wheelchair Basketball game on TV the commentary spent more time explaining the rules and classification than focusing simply on the action, that I never felt the game was being taken seriously.

7. What are your aims for the next 5 years?

I'm getting old now, 5 years is hard to commit to in a sporting sense. For sure I want to be selected for Tokyo and win Gold to complete our collection and I want to play in the next World Championships and attempt to defend our crown. After that I think my goals will be to stay in shape and play it year to year, I have no plans on retiring anyway!

8. What hobbies do you have outside of sport and have you started any new ones since lockdown?

I love nature so, I spend a lot of my free time just out and about relaxing in a forest or by a river somewhere and since lockdown in Germany was never so strict I have been doing that a lot more over the last few months, otherwise fairly normal and boring things like video games and Netflix have got me through the last few months. I did do a jigsaw puzzle but, nah wont be taking that on as a hobby!!

9. After a very close semi final defeat to Spain but then coming third in the 2016 Paralympics, how do you think the team will do in the Tokyo Paralympics?

I mean that hurt us all so much as a group and after seeing the team in the locker room after that game its actually a miracle we bounced back and got the Bronze. But that pain helped us grow so much as a group and from there, with a lot of growing pains and brutal honesty we went on to put Rio to bed by winning the World Championships in Hamburg in 2018 and beating Spain last year in the European Championship Final. I think we have an amazingly talented group right now but we know teams like USA are out for revenge and Tokyo is going to be a hell of a battle. There is now a long time until Tokyo so its probably too early to make any predictions but we want Gold and nothing but Gold.

10. How can someone reading this take up wheelchair basketball?

If you are in Britain you can check out https://britishwheelchairbasketball.co.uk/get-involved/play/club-finder/ to find clubs local to you. Most clubs will have various chairs you can try and will be happy to get you involved!