{"id":296892,"date":"2025-12-03T15:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/296892\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T15:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:04:08","slug":"wheelchair-rugby-league-is-booming-in-england-they-even-won-the-ashes-rugby-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/296892\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheelchair rugby league is booming in England \u2013 they even won the Ashes | Rugby league"},"content":{"rendered":"

England did win the Ashes last month. The wheelchair team\u2019s 2-0 series victory in Australia went under the radar in the UK. With games played in the early hours and not screened on mainstream TV, the team missed out on the adulation that came their way when they won the World Cup in Manchester<\/a> three years ago. \u201cThe forgotten Ashes? That\u2019s sad if it\u2019s true,\u201d says the coach, Tom Coyd. \u201cThe NRL showed great engagement and we did loads of media there, but we were in a bubble and pretty disconnected from back home.\u201d<\/p>\n

England will return to Australia next year to defend their world title. The favourites will be expected to beat Wales, USA and Ireland in their group before facing the second and third best teams in the world \u2013 France and Australia \u2013 in the knockout stages of the tournament in Wollongong. The Ashes series taught Coyd vital lessons about how to manage his troops on the road.<\/p>\n

His players have a wide range of disabilities \u2013 and two of them have none \u2013 so they need different support and schedules. \u201cThe last World Cup was familiar and potentially easier for us,\u201d says Coyd. \u201cWe could see our family and friends after games and we broke camp for days off so players could go home to sleep in their own beds. We\u2019ll have none of those luxuries next year. We\u2019ve got a diverse range of needs in the team and we\u2019ve learned we need to individualise the schedule as much as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat takes one person 30 minutes to do \u2013 say getting changed after a meeting and coming back for lunch \u2013 will take another player an hour. That\u2019s a nuance most other elite teams don\u2019t have to factor in. \u200bA\u200b lot of things are non-negotiables: team meetings, mealtimes \u2013 we will always break bread together \u2013 but we need to be clever and create space in every day so the guys feel comfortable and not rushed.\u201d<\/p>\n

England\u2019s coach, Tom Coyd, led England to victory in the Ashes series in Australia. Photograph: Jason O\u2019Brien\/SWpix.com<\/p>\n

It took a while for the squad to settle and find their rhythm on the tour. \u201cIt\u2019s really important we get those things right,\u201d says Lewis King, the England captain. \u201cLittle things playing on people\u2019s minds can stop us being our best off the pitch, which reflects on the pitch. It was more relaxed by the time we got to the Gold Coast \u2013 the players were happy then.\u201d<\/p>\n

After thrashing New South Wales<\/a> and scraping past Queensland<\/a> in warm-up matches, England were pushed all the way by Australia in both Ashes Tests. Behind on the scoreboard around the hour-mark in both games, England came through in the dying moments, winning the first Test 56-28<\/a> and the second 48-42<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Australia are improving and will have home advantage at the World Cup next October and November, but will remaining undefeated increase England\u2019s aura of invincibility? \u201cAura is a funny one,\u201d says Coyd. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in it, you don\u2019t see it, but everyone around you does and, when it\u2019s in front of you, it\u2019s very real. We\u2019ve been ranked No 1 for three years, so all the other teams have been hunting us down. The men\u2019s Kangaroos have sustained that success and that\u2019s credit to the competitions they\u2019ve created \u2013 the NRL and Origin \u2013 for battle-hardening their players to consistently compete when it comes down to knockout games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The evolution of Wheelchair Super League<\/a> has done that for England\u2019s players, who used all of their experience to reel in Australia in the two Ashes Tests. \u201cThere was no panic on the pitch at all,\u201d says King. \u201cYou never want to be in that position, having to claw back 16 points, but we knew if we stayed disciplined and composed, they\u2019d tire out before us and break. We\u2019re really proud of being the best in the world at that right now. But we expect Australia to get better every time we play them \u2013 and they do. They\u2019ll be better next year, but so will we.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wheelchair rugby league has spread throughout the country quickly in recent years, buoyed up by England winning the World Cup. The sport has developed a national footprint that the running game has not achieved in 130 years. The names at the top are refreshingly varied. Halifax beat London in the Grand Final in October; Edinburgh Eagles and Sheffield will play in the elite competition next season; the Wheelchair Championship has clubs in Hereford, Gravesend and Wrexham; there is also a separate Welsh league. The sport is reaching places the running game cannot sustain a presence.<\/p>\n

England have a cosmopolitan squad, with talent found in unlikely places: the coach, Coyd, and his brother Joe are from Medway; the captain, King, is from Dartford; Mason Billington was born in Rayleigh in Essex; Seb Bechara, the former world player of the year, is a concert trumpet player from Nottingham who plays for Catalans Dragons; and Luis Domingos, the former Portugal wheelchair basketball international, plays for Castleford Tigers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve proved that you don\u2019t have to have rugby league in a place to have wheelchair rugby league,\u201d says Coyd. \u201cWe\u2019re excited about playing the United States in the World Cup next year because they\u2019re a great example of that. We\u2019ve got people who come to our games who are not fans of the running game at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

England celebrate after winning the series. Photograph: Jason O\u2019Brien\/SWpix.com<\/p>\n

King was not interested in rugby when he was in Stoke Mandeville hospital as a 24-year-old rehabbing after a 21-hour operation to remove an arteriovenous malformation that was strangling his spinal cord and would leave him an incomplete paraplegic. But he was intrigued when a friend he knew from wheelchair basketball posted on Facebook about a wheelchair rugby league club. By extraordinary coincidence, the club was in King\u2019s home town of Dartford. \u201cI still think it\u2019s the best thing to ever happen in Dartford \u2013 apart from the Rolling Stones,\u201d says the 40-year-old.<\/p>\n

As captain of the England team, King is an important voice in the squad. But he is not alone in having a big influence in the dressing room. Players can perform at the elite level well into their 40s, which makes squads less hierarchical and more collaborative than in other sports. \u201cThe length of the career in wheelchair rugby league is unique,\u201d says Coyd. \u201cNot many elite players have stopped playing and graduated to becoming coaches yet. Many of our best performing teams are player-led. So England players do have influence over how they play and prepare.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sport has always been inclusive and diverse. Teenagers and 40-somethings are teammates; men and women play alongside each other; and players of all shapes and sizes can compete. But how will it retain that appeal as standards increase at the elite level? \u201cThe key to our sport is \u200bits inclusivity,\u201d says King. \u201cI\u2019d like to keep men and women playing together, and players from all different backgrounds. All of the women I\u2019ve played with want to play with the men \u2013 they love that. It\u2019s important, it\u2019s the identity of wheelchair rugby league. I wouldn\u2019t like to see that change a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coyd sees a fork in the road ahead. \u201cThe soul of the game is to offer opportunities for anyone and everyone to play. But at the elite level you have to be exclusive: it\u2019s natural selection, picking the best players. And, as the player base grows, we should naturally progress to have split gender competitions and provide women with a choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I\u2019m fully supportive of the established professional clubs having a wheelchair team and being ambitious, the opportunity we\u2019ve got \u2013 being the most inclusive sport in the world \u2013 to break into new areas and markets, we have to go after that. If in 10 years\u2019 time it looks like it does now or similar to the running game, with the same names at the top, then we\u2019ve missed the point and the potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow No Helmets Required on Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England did win the Ashes last month. The wheelchair team\u2019s 2-0 series victory in Australia went under the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-296892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}