About

Wheelchair Rugby is a sport created in 1977 in Canada by a group of tetraplegic wheelchair basketball players who were tired of losing out on court time to their more functional team mates. It spread swiftly to the USA and arrived at Stoke Mandeville in the early 1980’s, becoming a full Paralympic sport at Sydney in 2000 and one of the highlights of London 2012 and of the Invictus Games. In Tokyo, GB won the first ever Wheelchair Rugby medal for a European team, and it was GOLD, so also Paralympics GB’s FIRST TEAM GOLD Medal.

It was founded in 2018 as Hatfield Comets Wheelchair Rugby by five eligible players and a volunteer, with support from GB Wheelchair Rugby (the National Governing Body for the sport) and from London Wheelchair Rugby Club (the longest established “Quad” wheelchair rugby club in the UK, based at the National Orthopaedic Hospital Stanmore).

The club was gifted or loaned chairs by GBWR, LWRC and Stock Mandeville Marauders and commenced training under the guidance of Peter Freeman who had been volunteering at LWRC since he discovered the sport at London 2012.

The club was established as a Wheelchair Rugby 5’s club as it allowed players with less severe impairments as well as Quad eligible players to join in.

The original or Paralympic Quad variant was invented to allow players with the highest level of impairment to enjoy competitive sport in one of the only full-contact disability sports. WR5 was introduced by GBWR to expand the support while remaining true to the founding athletes. The most noticeable difference between the two variants is the number of players on court (Four in Quad and Five in WR5).

Both variants have players classified according to functional impairment between 0.5 and 4.0 with a maximum number of points permitted on court (8 and 10 respectively). This ensures that if a team has a less impaired player (eg. a 3.5 point player) then they need to put a lower point player (with greater physical impairments) on court to stay at that average of 2 points.

The Quad classification overlaps with the lowest classes of WR5 thus a Quad player classified as a 3.5 point player would be a 1.0 player in WR5. There is also a 0.5 point reduction for female athletes to encourage participation. It was until Tokyo 2020/1 the only Mixed Gender Olympic or Paralympic sport with male and female athletes on court together.

The newly formed club rapidly found new players wanting to join and learn about the sport.

Originally we had three members with Spinal Cord Injuries (“SCIs”) out of the five founders, but the wider eligibility of WR5s opened up the sport to other conditions. We have players with conditions including Spina Bifida, Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Acquired Brain Injury, Stroke and degenerative conditions as well as amputations.

Peter and other members long-term support of Saracens Rugby Club coincided with Saracens Sports Foundation’s commitment to inclusive and disabled sports programmes and lead to Hatfield Comets becoming Saracens Wheelchair Rugby Club. Independent of the Premiership team and commercial activities of Saracens, but proud to be part of the Saracens Family.

As is well known the Premiership club lost support of Allianz Insurance following the Salary Cap rule breaches and unfortunately so did Saracens Sports Foundation and SWRC as a consequence. We had been very well supported by Allianz and the Saracens Foundation up until the severing of ties by Allianz with the Premiership Club. So now we are financially self-supporting and reliant on our fundraising.

Unsurprisingly, as a full contact sport, the rugby chairs absorb a tremendous amount of physical punishment. The sport was originally called “murderball” which reflected the physical commitment of the players. Often heard from SCI players is ”so what is the worst that will happen, I’ve already broken my back!”.

To keep players safe the chairs have to be built for Rugby, a normal day chair would be destroyed (literally) by the first contact. In addition to the chairs loaned to us, which have reached the end of their safe lives, we were also provided with a number of standard “club” chairs thanks to Allianz and Saracens Foundation. However, the club has grown to 18 regular players, and has entered two teams in the WR5 League to maximise playing opportunities. We are therefore using dilapidated old chairs and need to replace those. Moreover, the “club” chairs (as well as being very heavy) are not fitted to the individual physical needs of the player using them. Therefore, we would like to be able to purchase new chairs to replace the original higher specification chairs we were lent, but that isn’t cheap!

As well as wear and tear on the structure of the chairs, inner tubes puncture routinely in collisions and, although Peter patches them as often as possible, eventually we have more patches than inner tube and have to recycle and use new inner tubes. Tyres also take a battering and become holed and unusable. Wheels, casters, gloves, straps and belts all get damaged and need replacing.