The Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby team achieved a historic campaign in 2021, as they left Tokyo with their first Paralympic medals, and set the bar for next Summer’s Games in Paris. Team GB now have a gold standard to match, and Co-Captain Gavin Walker believes that his squad have what it takes to retain their title.
After experiencing the heights of the 1st place winner’s podium, nothing less will do for Walker’s side, as he co-captains the team with Stuart Robinson ahead of their trip to Paris. Speaking exclusively to Ruck, Walker backs his side to replicate the triumph of three years ago, as preparations heat up ahead of next August. The 40-year-old viewed the Tokyo tournament amongst his indisputable career highlights, and reminisced on the semi-final triumph which secured a Paralympic medal.
“Yes, it’s obviously definitely up there. I would say the most emotional game for me would have been the semi-final game before that. Knowing as a team, that you’ve secured a medal at Japan in that semi final, was an unbelievable experience. To know that you’re going through to a final, knowing that you can definitely leave that tournament with a medal was really, really special.
“Something happened in that game where things just clicked. With played relatively well, throughout that tournament anyway, it was a strange tournament to go into. Because of Covid, we didn’t really had the opportunity to play these teams leading up to that, on and as I say things clicked. Everything was firing, and we were really confident going into that final game against USA.
“We previously lost to them (USA), then going away after that game, and having some deep conversations between coaches and athletes. We had a great game plan, going into that game with a lot of confidence, we didn’t really have anything to lose, it would have been very easy just to be comfortable with the silver. You know, we’re the first British team, first European team to get a medal (at the Paralympics), so silver would have been a fantastic achievement.
“But that wasn’t good enough, and we really went into that final, with a great mindset. That’s something that’s continued, we have lost some players, and since that time, we’ve had to rebuild. We’ve had a new assistant coach join us, some new players, so out of the top teams, we and probably the USA have gone through a bit of a rebuilding process. I do feel like it’s finally coming together at the right time. So we’re really looking forward now to Paris and recreating what we were able to do in Tokyo.”
GBWR have two more globe-trotting stops ahead of the 2024 Paris Paralympics, in important competitions that will test their current form against the world’s top sides. This begins with a test against European opposition in Denmark, before heading out to North America for the 2024 Canada Cup International Wheelchair Rugby Tournament in June. Walker discussed how the squad are finishing up their Paralympic preparations, and how their training schedule is looking ahead of the trip to the French capital.
“We did have maybe a month off in September, the start of October and since then, we’re getting ourselves ready now. The aim at the moment is more sort of physical preparation. Spending a lot of time in the gym, and then in the New Year it’ll be focusing on our first tournament, which is in March, we’re off to Denmark.
“So that’s a great preparation tournament early on, to see where we are. Then we go to Canada later on in the year, and then that will be our last sort of big opportunity to put things in place as a team, and gauge ourselves against the rest of the world. But that will still leave us a good couple of months to go back home, work on the finer details of things before we head off to Paris.
“A normal training week, because we are situated and dotted all around the country. Most of the week, we train as individuals or in smaller groups. We will get together and work in twos threes, or maybe, in smaller groups. That North of England will get together, the South of England will get together, and we have our own gym programs, which is all individualised, they’ll be all done with our individual personal trainers.
“But then every two weeks or so we’ll come together as a larger squad, than that’s when we’ll work on our skills as a team and introduce what we’ve been working on, to face these bigger teams that are only getting stronger and stronger.”
For people that are new to Wheelchair Rugby, the sport was formally known as ‘murder-ball’, and features four vs four contact competition on a basketball court. The sport is mixed gender, and the aim of the game is getting the ball over the opponents in-goal area, to score points not too dissimilar to a try in rugby union, or a touchdown in the NFL.
In regards to the individual players and their disabilities, each side is allowed a maximum of eight ‘classification points’ per team, or 8.5 with a female player. This correlates to the extent of the wheelchair user’s physical abilities, for example, Walker’s lower body paralysis is recorded as 2.0 out of 3.5 classification points. A former firefighter, the Great Britain star was on the brigade for one of UK’s busiest stations, which frequently featured on TV.
Walker discussed how his world changed following his accident, which left him wheelchair bound and looking at his next chapter in life. The inspiring Paralympian took his unbreakable mentality from the fire brigade to the wheelchair rugby court, and shared his story on how he first discovered the sport.
“I live in Rotherham, and most of my work all my career, actually, I worked in Sheffield. My first posting was one of the busiest stations. Definitely in South Yorkshire and in most of the UK, it was publicised quite a lot on ‘Police, Camera, Action’, one of the more deprived areas of Sheffield. That was really exciting as a young firefighter, I was only 19 at the time. We’re so busy, but learned so much from being at such a busy fire station.”
“So, my accident in 2010 wasn’t a very exciting story really, considering I was a firefighter before with many hazards and opportunities to injure myself. I slipped and fell on some wet decking at a family barbecue, and I fell in such a way that I hit my chin on the floor, which resulted in me breaking my neck. I guess because of my previous experience as a firefighter and the knowledge of C-spine (cervical spine) injuries, I recognised that something wasn’t quite right.
“So, although I didn’t know the extent of my injury, I knew that I’d done something pretty serious. I got taken to Sheffield spinal unit, and I was told that I’d be paralysed from the chest down pretty much straightaway, pretty early on in my recovery. So what that basically means is from my chest down, I have no sensation, movement, I can’t feel pain below that level. I have almost full function of my arms, but very little function in my hands. So I can’t clench my fingers to make a fist, for example.”
“When I originally started to play wheelchair rugby, I was in the process of returning to work, not as a firefighter on a fire engine, but working in the health and safety department. Unfortunately, that came to an end, but as that was happening, I was playing wheelchair rugby more and more. I realised that the sport actually filled a lot of the things that was missing from the fire service. Being part of a team, that camaraderie, the excitement of being turned out to an incident on blue lights, and flying around in a fire engine is also pretty exciting.
That was something that was missing as well. So, now I get my excitement from flying around the court and bashing into each other with our rugby chairs. That fulfils that, of course, there’s the excitement of playing for Great Britain in front of crowds and traveling the world. That’s something as well that I’ve never envisaged. But there’s a side to the fire service, which instills discipline into thinking. Back then, at the start of each shift, for example, you’d go through all the equipment on the fire appliance and make sure that it’s all been tested, it’s all in good working order.
There’s elements like that, for me directly, that relate to my role as an athlete as well. You have to be quite diligent, you have to make sure that you’re doing everything that’s been asked of you to a higher standard, and hold yourself accountable. My role now as captain, it’s my job to maintain those standards and be a role model for others to follow as well. So, I do feel like a lot of those qualities expected of me as a firefighter, have really crossed over into this career.”
Walker’s incredible mentality turned what was a life-altering accident into an opportunity. Team GB’s resilient captain adapted to the challenge, and after a gruelling half year of working his strength back up, turned his attention to the sport of wheelchair rugby. His rehabilitation physio was the initial introduction, who gave him his classification and first attempts at the sport.
“Six months in hospital in Sheffield, rehabilitating and working closely with physios and occupational therapy, that where I initially got signposted to wheelchair rugby. My physio at the time was one of the classifiers for the sport. So, leading up to classification, we’re allowed eight points on court at any one time, and four players. We have a classification system like all of the disability sports, and our classification runs from 0.5, which is the weakest player on court to 3.5, which is the most functional player. Im 2.0, so, I’m bang in the middle, you know, jack of all trades, I’m expected to do a little bit of everything.
“The weak players on court day would be much slower, wouldn’t really be expected to handle the ball very much and don’t really have great arm function, to the point where they don’t have triceps. Their wheelchairs would look a little different to mine. So, they have what what’s called a pick bar on the front of their chairs, which is used as a defensive weapon. You could place them is more of a defensive player.
“Then the higher point players, your 3.5s, the highest functional players, they would be the big boys on court, they’d be much faster at handling the ball. They’re throwing the ball from one end of the court to the other, really dominant and very powerful, and I guess they get all the glory. But without these low point players, you really wouldn’t be able to play the game. That’s where the combination of the four players is really important, and that team aspect really comes into play.
“Out of those four players, you can’t exceed those eight points. The only sort of caveat to that is because we do play a mixed sport, male and female, females get a 0.5 reduction. We can actually play eight and a half points, if we have one female, out of those four. That’s a great initiative for teams to recruit female players in the past, and in the gold medal winning team, we had a female player on our team. That’s something that’s really growing within the sports as well.”
Aside of his international duties with Great Britain, Walker plays his club wheelchair rugby with Leicester Tigers. The East Midlands side were the first to become formerly aligned with a professional rugby union club, and won their division in their inaugural season. Leicester are one of the fastest rising clubs in the country, due to their involvement with former Tigers prop Matt Hampson’s Foundation, which was set up after a scrummaging accident in 2005 left the 21-year-old with a severed spinal cord.
Walker discussed how the UK’s domestic Wheelchair Rugby leagues have grown insurmountably during his time in the sport. When the gold-medal winner made his debut, it was for one of just eight teams across the entire country some 12 years ago. Now, there are three competitive leagues, which Walker believes reflects how the sport has grown in a relatively short space of time.
“The league structure, just starting there, it is an ever changing thing. As the sport grows, we’re finding we have to develop the structure of the of the league as well. Back in the day when I joined, we only had one league of eight teams. And now we have three different leagues; Premiership, first and a second division.
“Leicester Tigers, the club I currently play for sort of grew out of a club that was already developed within the Midlands. Then particularly Matt Hampson, when he had his injury and then set up the Matt Hampson foundation, it was something that he really drove. He wanted not only to support a wheelchair rugby team, but to have one aligned and supported by Leicester Tigers, the club he played for.
“So, from that point, I think we were the first club in the country to align ourselves with a rugby club. In saying, that’s started to happen more and more. So with the support of the Leicester Tigers Foundation and the Matt Hampson Foundation, Leicester Tigers has really grown from that point, as I say, it grew out of a club that was already established.
“We had the players, we had, the basic structure, but then to bring a professional team like Leicester Tigers on board with their funding and support, I guess ideas as well, of how to grow the club, he’s really gone from strength to strength. Starting in the lower divisions, which you have to do as a new club, to get into where we are now, where we’re league champions is great.
“I think it’s sort of driving the sport in the direction that we want as well, it’s making other clubs around the country pick up their game.
Looking beyond next Augusts’ Paralympics, Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby announced their ’28 in 28′ campaign, to ‘future-proof’ the sport and cement a legacy ahead of the Los Angeles Paralympic Games. The campaign plans for GBWR to bring in 28 new collaborative partners, and make Wheelchair Rugby the flagship Paralympic sport for Team GB. Speaking about this ground-breaking ambition, Walker expressed his excitement for what the future of wheelchair rugby has in store.
“It’s really, really exciting. I’m under no illusions that I think it’s something that we can achieve. For many years, now, it’s been one of the first four, if not the first sport in the Paralympics to sell out, so we know that the interest is there. But raising the profile further is going to be something that’s going to take the sport to that next level.
“I think it’s quite a good way of going about it really, to get more people on board to share our enthusiasm and sort of drive the sport forward. As an organisation, and as a sport, we sort of see ourselves as a big family, anyone that’s within the sport, they’ll tell you, we do have that feeling about us. I think getting more people on board, is perhaps the way forward for us.
“Obviously, each person that does put themselves forward and does get themselves on board to help the progress the sport, will be part of that as well, will be part of this bigger family that’s driving the sport forward. And because of the interest that’s already there, I think it’s something that, as I say, is really achievable for us. I think we can be that disability sport that’s really at the forefront and showcased, particularly in LA, but also in Paris as well.”