COLIN Wood, from Rugby, wants to bring the wheelchair rugby community together by creating a professional adaptive team in the Midlands.
Wood has founded the British and Irish Wheelchair Rugby Association (BWRU/L) in an attempt to create a future national and international pathway for the sport of wheelchair rugby.
Through his community interest company (CIC), Adaptive Sports Innovations (ASI), Wood hopes to revolutionise the sport.
And Wood wants the town of Rugby to become a central hub for the sport of wheelchair rugby on grass.
Wood has now developed a chair capable of operating on a grass pitch.
And he believes the first step in professionalising the sport is to play the wheelchair game on a grass pitch.
Wood hopes the wheelchair rugby community will come together to build a professional England team in the Midlands.
The team will be made up of players from the surrounding area and also from further afield in England and Scotland.
Wood said: “We’d like to build the town of Rugby, where the game was born, into the central hub for wheelchair rugby on grass and a professional team to be built is in production at Rugby Lions RFC.
“Our good friend and co-founder Adam Mould, before he passed away, was very keen for this to build into something productive for wheelchair bound sports men and women around the UK and eventually the world.
“The issues facing ASI are support, awareness and funding, we have a fantastic product that really does allow rugby to be played outside on grass.
“The indoor rugby game is relatively well developed and successful but it isn’t on grass.
“It’s played on expensive and rarely available indoor basketball courts in hot and cramped buildings with very little airflow.
“We can provide the opportunity for everyone, able bodied and adaptive bodied, to play the game we all love on the surface it was meant for, outside in the open air, starting in Rugby the birthplace of the game.”
With a prototype chair now built, Wood hopes others will share his vision, allowing him to stage games across the country in the future.
However, Wood admits funding poses a major problem to the development of the sport.
Wood’s aim is also to select the first-ever England wheelchair rugby squad to play a game on a grass pitch against Scotland.
And he is also searching for athletes to form one male squad and one female squad to play against Scotland in a world first wheelchair access game on grass.
Wood added: “Funding is a major issue for us. We have been personally financing all developments with help more recently from other private contributors.
“But it is very much hand to mouth and not sustainable.
“In the last year we have redesigned the original chair design and refined a few areas.
“The first final prototype has been designed and manufactured in Porto, Portugal.
“We now have a chair that we believe is fit for purpose and something we hope we can use to showcase our dream and gain financial support to manufacture more chairs so games can be laid on and teams built across Great Britain and Ireland.
“Before any of this can happen, we need support from local clubs to help raise awareness, source funding and begin the process of building a local team to represent England in a game against Scotland.
“The dream is to build teams around the UK to compete at a local and national counties level. We are taking the first step now.
“It is a very exciting opportunity, but it needs backing and support to move forward, with all clubs together in our communities.”
