DISABILITY FOOTBALL

Back in the summer my talents were employed in the score tent at a 6-a-side Disabled Football Competition run by St Albans City Youth.  The Charter Standard Club is perhaps the leading youth football club in Hertfordshire, this year turning out 37 teams in a variety of competitions, mini-football, girl’s football as well as boys.  They have been running a disabled team for two seasons and last season saw them enter the London and South East Counties Abilities Count League (now there’s a goldmine for the medal engravers!) that contains teams from Chelsea, Fulham and Ipswich giving it considerable attraction.  However they find themselves travelling long distances in order to fulfil their away fixtures.

The team struggled in the league as it was a huge step up from the friendlies they had played but met the challenge and recorded their first win at Easter over Chelsea, no less.  For some reason the media did not pick up on this shock defeat for the Chelsea team and the fact that it started the ball rolling with regard to the ‘surprise’ departure of the manager.  With the limited opportunities for disabled footballers the City Youth 6-a-side competition drew in teams from a wide area including Brentford, Waltham Forest, Southwark and Hammersmith and Fulham.  The team from Maldon never made it, as some players were involved in a road accident on the way.

As the teams assembled at the venue there was an excited atmosphere, very much the same bubbling enthusiasm that is given off by an Under 8’s competition before old age and world-weary cynicism sets in for the Under 9’s.  This was perhaps understandable given that although the competitors were in their teens, 20’s and beyond it was the first time they had ever had the opportunity to play in a “Major Competition.”

Make no mistake these players were there to play football.  Some of them very seriously, others with a more cavalier and Corinthian attitude but nonetheless a serious determination to give it their best.  After a few games and defeats the elderly Hitchin ‘B’ squad, most in their 30,s and 40,s, realised they were not going to sweep all before them and at one point, between games, collapsed into a mass of giggles when their mature goalkeeper announced “he was going to kiss a girl.”  But he was still focused as he added he was only going to do it after the competition was over.

Disabilities covered the whole range, learning problems, upper limb or lower limb disability, sight problems and one completely blind player who had someone holding his hand whilst he was on the pitch.  As the St Albans team manager will tell you the greatest problem he faces is ensuring he complies with the restrictions and rules regarding the balance of disability on the pitch at a given point.  If he plays someone with a lower limb disability he can then put on a more physically able player, perhaps with a learning problem, at the same time.  He needs a large squad to enable him juggle all of these factors throughout the game.

The competition was played in a wonderful sporting spirit perhaps typified by the celebrations when the Brentford team having shipped large numbers of goals in every game managed to score in their final match. Equally when a player was brought down by wild, knee high, lunge the referee knew he need take no further action as the culprit was fighting back his tears as he helped the victim back to his feet.

Since the summer one of the St Albans City Youth players has become part of the Great Britain squad and will now be making trips into Europe.

Ian Jardine