Powerchair footballers gear up
It’s football, but if Cristiano Ronaldo tried to play he’d likely be red carded.
The world-class footballer might have fanciful skills on the field, but in powerchair football, a team sport played by electric wheelchair users, it’s all about finessing your skills while strapped to the chair.
Played on a basketball court, there’s no diving, fancy foot work or video assistant referees. Forget goalies, contact and off-sides, instead, players have to manoeuvre their specialty electronic sports chairs and use footguards to attack, defend, and spin-kick the extra large football.
With temperamental chairs and eight players on the court vying for the ball, it’s an art much trickier than it sounds.
Canterbury law student Luke Alderton said his chair was ‘‘extremely responsive and doesn’t always do what you want’’.
He’s had plenty of practice, driving his first power chair as a toddler. Alderton, who developed transverse myelitis and suffered subsequent spinal cord damage as a baby, said after discovering the sport at an exposition at the Burwood Spinal Unit in 2009, he had played competitively since 2013.
Christchurch is home to the only powerchair football team in the South Island but there are five other Kiwi teams scattered further north.
At the first national competition in Taupo last year, the Canterbury team took home the gold medal and they hope to go back-to-back at the same competition in April this year.
Canterbury powerchair football coach Ali Alderton said she wanted to raise awareness and grow membership in the sport nationally as many powerchair users may have ruled out the possibility of playing football.
Despite being one of the few sports available to athletes in electric wheelchairs, it recently missed out on a coveted spot in the program at the 2024 Paralympic Games. Para-sports were included at this year’s Commonwealth Games and Australia will host the 2021 FIPFA World Cup in Sydney.
The unrivalled camaraderie kept Alderton coming back as ‘‘for people in electric wheelchairs like myself, it is the only sport that provides this feeling’’.
Highlights included captaining New Zealand in two close losses against Australia, the fourth best team in the world, but training was difficult as teams had to travel for competition as there were not enough Canterbury players to form two teams. Despite the similarities, top footballers would struggle with the sport, he said. ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they were given a red card for crashing … maybe give them some time and it would certainly be great to see.’’
Diversity was difficult in wheelchair sports because the degree of everyone’s disabilities was so variable but powerchair football gave everyone an equal chance, he said. Players needed to have a disability that was significant enough to prevent them from playing ‘‘pushchair’’ sports and most had spinal injuries, muscular dystrophy, or cerebral palsy.