Tournament blog

Football under the spot light

With less than three weeks to go until the opening of the IBSA World Blind Football Championship in Hereford, head coach of the national squad Tony Larkin brings us weekly report from the England camp

I was at The Royal Welsh Show in Llanelwedd with Jon Gribbin, one of the England Squad, doing a blind football demonstration last week when I had a call from Jeremy Vine’s office at BBC Radio 2 asking if I’d comment on the Paddy Power ad. For those of you who haven’t seen this TV commercial, it it’s one of a series of tongue in cheek sports spoof advertisements Paddy Power has run. This one involved a blind football team (including one of our retired players) apparently kicking a cat instead of a blind football (both, obviously, come with bells).

The ad does raise some issues but it has baffled the players why it takes something like this to get the sport into the national mindset when we’re just a few weeks away from a historical first for blind football. Like the ad or not, no one – including the retired players who were featured in that commercial – want to divert attention from blind football at its best; and the fact that in less than four weeks time this country is hosting the Blind World Cup and welcoming the best blind teams from around the globe for the competition.

Once I’d managed up a high enough hill to get a mobile signal in deepest Wales, and chatted to Jeremy Vine he supported that idea too, as did the hundreds of listeners we’ve already heard from as a result of that broadcast.

Meanwhile back at our training ground at the College, the FA brought the Greek Blind Football team over for an international friendly at the weekend. This was a brilliant pre-tournament warm up opportunity for our lads so close to kick off and a great opportunity for local media who hadn’t seen the guys in action before. We beat Greece – who didn’t qualify for this year’s tournament - on both Saturday (1-0) and Sunday (2-1).

We had some other very special guests arrive at the same time. Dozens of children from around the UK came to Hereford this week for a three day Soccer Sight course. This is an initiative launched by the RNIB and now run by the Blind Football Academy at the College to give young people with sight loss the chance to learn how to play football. They were joined – much to their delight – by two of the cast of Hollyoaks - Ashley Taylor Dawson (aka Darren) and Anthony Quinlan (aka Gilly) who wanted to meet the squad and have a go at blind football for a spot on a Channel 4 documentary. Both of them were blown away by what they saw, and tried, and they’ll be back in Hereford to support England in a few weeks.

Elsewhere on the campus some 60 volunteers were enjoying some training of their own in preparation for their work during the tournament. They represented a wonderful cross section of the Herefordshire community and left the day really excited about being a part of the World Cup…

I do hope you are going to be a part of it, too. Tickets are selling fast so visit us at thePoint4 or at www.blind2010.com to reserve a day pass

Posted by Tony Larkin on 27-07-2010

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