THE starting point was in Alabama. The end will be equality.
For now, like many others, Alan Crooks is confined to home but – typically – the Irish Football Association’s Disability Football Development Manager sees opportunity rather than an obstacle.
Crooks has brought the disability sector a long way but, once everyone can get out and about again, he wants to go so much further.
The enforced time off has its upside, he says: “Obviously there’s no delivery at all at the moment, we’ve had to cancel/postpone programmes. But there’s a new disability strategy to be released next year, 2021, so I’m working away at that, getting a few ideas together.
“The main theme will be about making disability a provision across the whole football family.”
The travel restrictions currently in place have helped in a strange way, pointing out what the way forward should be:
“What we have learned recently is that we can’t deliver from a central area, from Windsor. We need to support local clubs to deliver. That’s the way we’re going.”
Crooks himself went a long way in the mid-Nineties before coming back to Belfast, he recalls:
“I didn’t play at that high a level. I was at Crusaders when I was younger and then, freakily, got asked to go on a soccer scholarship in America. I started coaching because, although I was on a full scholarship, I had no income.
“I was coaching in behavioural schools in Alabama, a lot of players with issues like ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] that I’d never come across before. It was an interesting start to my coaching.
“When I came back home I went through my coaching badges, I was back playing for Ards, started coaching youth teams at Knockbreda, and then the job came up at the Association, and thankfully I got it.”
That was 2003 and the progress since then has been significant: “When I started in the Association 17 years ago, provision for those with a disability was mainly in free coaching sessions within Special Education with minimal club opportunities, competition or international pathways. Other organisations, such as, Special Olympics were providing opportunities for those with a learning disability but there were huge gaps in provision for those with a physical disability or sensory impairment.”
“It was something that the Irish FA instigated, all done through this one person at the Association creating separate opportunities for people with disabilities to play.
“Over the years we’ve seen that slowly progressing into local provision from councils, clubs, and schools, creating their own programmes. We’ve been supporting that and the next strategy will really bring that to the fore.
“The IFA will be more of a supporting body for coach education and to improve competition and representative opportunities.”
Crooks, as is his way, finds further grounds for optimism amidst the current crisis, noting: “There has been a big response to volunteering with the NHS, which shows there is a willingness to help among the general public.
“Twenty-five years ago clubs were mainly just about men – then there was an explosion of youth football, then the women’s game, and now disability is slowly but surely growing as well.
“The football family is open to development; the question is can we as an Association get the right support mechanisms in place to assist people to deliver?”
Backing from the IFA is key – and it has always been provided, he insists: “It’s always been very well supported by the Association.
“My job and programmes are core-funded through the Irish FA, they get financial support from Uefa for the disability programmes.
“Then we have some private sponsorship which really helps – the Mary Peters Trust is a good partner and we have had various individual sponsors for tournaments and programmes. BT are supporting our international squads, which is great.”
Wider attitudes in society matter too: “I’ve always found it a very positive environment to work in, I love my job, which is a good thing.
“There can be a stigma about disability, a fear factor; that’s diminishing but it’s still there.
“Most coaches of all ages are usually open to including people with disabilities – but they can be fearful about safety. There are barriers to participation in all sports for all people with disabilities – and people can often be the barrier.
“It’s a matter of educating and supporting to see if we can make bigger strides in having an inclusive attitude across the country.
“We’ve had a lot of success with senior clubs. Glentoran have a massive disability programme, Linfield have just started, Crusaders, Coleraine, they are delivering great programmes.
“We’ve had success with junior clubs like Sion Swifts and Lurgan Town boys too, creating opportunities, which is super.”
Getting to the recent situation of around 5,000 people with a disability playing football in its programmes by the end of 2019 has been a long process:
“It’s an enjoyable arena to work in. Probably one of the best things we’ve done is the annual Community Cup. That started in 2003 with four teams and last year we had 72 teams, from the UK and Ireland.
“It’s good to see 12 pitches in action all at the same time, different ability levels, everyone with a smile on their face. More than 600 people with a disability enjoying their football is very rewarding to see.”
Yet for all the positives, there remains plenty of room for improvement: “There are areas of need – we have 50-odd clubs now delivering disability programmes but there are still huge areas of need.
“The likes of county Tyrone has very limited opportunities, the ABC [Armagh Banbridge Craigavon] Council area needs a few more opportunities, and even Derry/Londonderry. We will be targeting some areas and clubs to provide opportunities going forward.
“There are a lot of opportunities in Belfast: there are clubs for visual impairment, if you’ve a wheelchair, learning disability, autism…But if you live in Lurgan and you are a wheelchair user your nearest club is Dungannon. If you’ve a visual impairment and you live in Enniskillen, your nearest club is Londonderry/Derry. There are big gaps but compared to 17 years ago it has improved greatly.
“When we started we set up the first six disability football clubs, county-based, and organised them all centrally from Windsor. That worked to a certain extent, but you really need local people and local clubs providing opportunities.
“It’s a case of us up-skilling and providing support for clubs to deliver that. It’s never easy, but it is possible with the right support.”
There have been notable achievements on the international from, with the Learning Disability squad winning the 2019 Home Nations Championships, the Powerchair team finishing fifth in the European Championships staged in Finland to qualify for the 2021 World Cup in Australia, and the Cerebral Palsy panel runners-up in a Barcelona invitational tournament.
Crooks demands more, though, at both local and international levels: “We want to create better competitive opportunities, because everyone wants to play matches.
“It doesn’t matter if you have a disability or not, you don’t want to just do weekly training sessions, you want to play games. It’s up to us as an Association to create competition pathways.
“We have a league at the minute but some clubs don’t enter because of the travel involved. It’s at Newtownabbey, so Sion don’t play in it, for example. We hope to work with the likes of Special Olympics who run a league to create a more joined-up approach to competition. We want to build international squads up too.”
The work needed to achieve such progress has been going on, and will resume in time:
“I’m the only full-time disability person in the IFA – but in the last strategy we were able to get disability into football development programmes.
“So all the regional grassroots development officers are doing great work developing clubs, and that includes clubs with disabilities. We had use of all the primary school coaches, they were in all the special schools for us, so that had a great impact on our participation numbers.
“That Primary School programme finished due to lack of government funding but we now have 12 ‘Let Them Play’ officers in the hubs and they and their staff will be going into special education in September, hopefully, if we’re back in school.
“We do have a good buy-in from the whole football development department and the next strategy will continue that, so that everyone has targets within the disability sector.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, there are still many gaps in provision. We need more buy-in from all the staff at the IFA never mind the general footballing public.
“It’s up to me to write a strategy and lobby within the association to get the widespread support that I feel is needed for disability to become a real, integral part of football.
“There’s been a lot of success, we have good numbers playing the game, but we want to get away from the big separation.
“If you live in the Coleraine area, for example, you’re wearing the same training kit as the first team, going to play competitions wearing the Coleraine kit – that’s what we’re after. That’s great to see in some areas and hopefully something that we can continue to grow.
“Of the 12 senior teams in the Irish League, not all have a disability section; we are in contact with all the clubs, and they do some great things for their community.
“It may not be possible for every club to do something – but we certainly want to ask the question, what can we do for your local disabled community?”
LD V Eng – picture of International Learning Disability game v England