In just her fourth ever game of rugby league on Saturday, Hannah Bluck became a Wales international in a fourth sport, and her fifth sport overall.<\/p>\n
As well as 15 rugby union caps, she has international football caps at under-16, under-17 and under-19 age levels, as well as in basketball.<\/p>\n
She also played rugby sevens for Great Britain in the summer.<\/p>\n
But perhaps the most impressive thing for Bluck is how she is using her autism to thrive and learning to adapt to change, as she competes in a new sport.<\/p>\n
“Autism is a massive spectrum,” she said. <\/p>\n
“You get people who excel and their specialities are dinosaurs or computers.<\/p>\n
“Mine is sport, so that’s my main focus and like that’s the thing that I love doing.”<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old from Porthcawl left rugby union side Exeter Chiefs this summer before playing three games of league with Cardiff Demons.<\/p>\n
Bluck says the coaches have been brilliant in helping her beast adapt to the change of sport for her learning style.<\/p>\n
“The coaches do diagrams and stuff for me so it’s easier for me to visually see it,” she told BBC World Service’s programme Sportsworld.<\/p>\n
“When it comes to training they do a practice run that I’ll watch first so I can visually see it before taking part in it.<\/p>\n
“They understand that, which is good.”<\/p>\n
She credits her room-mate Ffion Lewis with helping her to be confident to share her autism with the rest of the squad who Bluck says have been “very supportive”.<\/p>\n
“Ffion said, ‘oh Blucky I think it would be good for you to like just open up to girls so they understand you a bit better’.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes I’m really bubbly and then outside of training I’m like a closed book then. <\/p>\n
“When I do sport, I’m an open book and that’s where I excel and I feel like my most confident.<\/p>\n
“When I come out of that then I just go back into my shell because I struggle with like social settings and stuff.<\/p>\n
“I have pride in it [sport] and it’s where I make my friends, that’s where I feel a part of a family and where I feel myself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In just her fourth ever game of rugby league on Saturday, Hannah Bluck became a Wales international in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807728","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\/807728","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=807728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}