Visually Impaired Rugby

Gareth Davis hadn’t expected to be told he was blind. He’d played county-level rugby, he loved the game, but his sight was going. He knew it, but didn’t want to acknowledge it. When he read it in black and white, that was it. What was he going to do next?

When Gareth received the letter, the ‘bottom fell out of his world’. “I just thought, ‘what the fuck am I going to do?’” he says. “It was a dark time, I was very angry, very scared – I was the main breadwinner, and keeping my job was going to be very difficult. And I had two children of primary school age to support.”

He’d just been registered blind. “The lowest moment was when I received that letter. The hardest thing was accepting it, that’s the clincher. You’re fighting against the tide emotionally, so it’s hard to accept, and the other hard thing is that while there is a world of opportunity with sight loss, I just couldn’t see it at the time.”

Gareth had always loved rugby. A scrum-half, he’d captained his county – Oxfordshire – at age grade, played  for his local club side Witney and then played for his university when he moved to Cardiff. He stopped when a knee injury, combined with deteriorating eye sight, started to have an impact. “I was diagnosed with a genetic condition in my early 20s,” he says. “I couldn’t see in the dark, and it was getting progressively worse. It impacted on my training under floodlights, and then I started to lose my peripheral vision, and it was like I was looking through a toilet roll, so I couldn’t see people coming in at the ruck.” 

Both his brothers also had the condition, but the thinking was that none of them would go blind until they were in their 60s or 70s. With Gareth it happened far sooner, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it. “You think you’re going to live forever, so you dismiss it,” he admits. “But then you start noticing things, your sight starts deteriorating, you’re walking into things, bumping into lampposts and people, tripping over, and falling. Then you’re not being able to read newspapers, books…”

Although he’d had lots of tests with ophthalmologists, he’d always carried on thinking time was on his side. “Then in my late-30s, my sight took a significant drop, I was having bumps all the time, and my wife at the time told me to go back to hospital, and things had changed. 

“The hospital had lost my notes, so I’d never been called back when I should have been. When I did eventually get an appointment, I had a number of tests, and then, three weeks later, out of the blue – through my letterbox amid my bank statements and bills – I had a letter saying I was registered blind. It’s the sort of thing they’re supposed to sit you down and tell you, but they didn’t and it blew my mind. It was the thing I was expecting in my 60s, not my late-30s. It was a devastating moment.”

Si Ledwith, has played cricket and VI rugby for his country and also worked with gangs during his time at the Change Foundation

Gareth was referred to an ECLO [eye clinic liaison officer] by the RNIB. “That was quite a turning point,” he says, “although I was still in a very dark place, that lady gave me hope that there was still a life out there. She put me in touch with other services, I got assistance, I started using a white stick, and she put me in touch with a guide dogs’ charity – I now have a guide dog. 

“It wasn’t sweetness and light, but it marginally improved.”

His eyes would deteriorate so that in his right eye, he had zero vision, and in his left,  he had five per cent vision. “About a year later I’d begun to live a very unhealthy lifestyle, drinking a lot, eating junk, it was a midlife malaise,” says Gareth, whose condition had also put a strain on his marriage, resulting in separation. “I started going to Cardiff Met gym, getting back into normal weights, boot camps, and rediscovering that buzz, and that helped in terms of wellbeing. It was the starting point for pulling out of the unhappiness and depression of sight loss.”

Realising his fitness was getting on a level with some of the students he shared a gym with, Gareth starting look into sport. “All the disability sports were things like bowls, archery – they even had something with air guns. Basically every stereotype for disability sport, I wanted something like rugby or a team-related sport.

“I phoned up some old friends at Witney rugby to see if I could play a game again. I just wanted to have one last game ever, to get my hands on the ball, to experience the smell of everything – the changing room, the mud, the ball. I wanted to be immersed in it again, even if it was just for one game. 

“They got me in with the third team and I played on the right wing, which meant I could use the little bit of vision I had in my left eye to be involved. It was amazing.”

Not long after his ‘final game’, a friend of Gareth’s was at a team-building in the city and met with a man called Alex Bassan, who had helped set up a new form of rugby, visually impaired rugby.

Alex Bassan was watching rugby with his work colleague, Si Ledwith when they had the idea. “We were at Si’s place in Shoreham-by-Sea, watching the rugby, and I said to him, ‘it’s a shame there isn’t a rugby game for you guys’, and he responded, “I know, I bloody love rugby’. So I said,  ‘why don’t we create one?’”

The two were in a good place to do exactly that. Both working for the Change Foundation – an organisation that uses sport to create social change – Si, who is registered blind, was also a former England blind cricket international. “We went to Andy [Sellins], our CEO,” says Alex. “He was also a rugby nut and the first thing we all agreed on was that, our biggest pet peeve with disability sport was that they adapt the sport so much it doesn’t feel like the sport anymore. So you could easily end up with a form of rugby where they pass the ball forward or throw it through hoops, but we wanted to keep it very much like rugby.

“We decided to keep the sevens format of the game, make it non-contact, and, after each touch, they place the ball through the legs. After six of those, it was then a turnover, and we’d have scrums and lineouts. Also, when you make a tackle, you drop back by five.”

The end result meant the game was effectively like a game of sevens touch. Google it now, and you’ll see that, despite all players being registered blind, the game has plenty of pace. 

One challenge was the ball, and making it audible. “We originally put ball bearings inside,” says Alex, “but as players got better – and some of them had been sighted and played rugby before, but lost sight – they were spinning the ball, and the balls would stick to the side of the ball and make the audibility of the ball redundant. 

“We got in contact with Gilbert, and created a ball which has bells in it. We also had to have it very bright white because there were a very large number of other players who can pick up white at close proximity.

“The refereeing was key,” continues Alex, “we wanted them to almost commentate the game as it’s happening – how many tackles were made, and make sure they follow the ball, so if you know the referee is in the middle of the pitch, then you know where the ball is.” 

Almost any level of blind player can now play the sport. “There are sight categories in British Blind Sport that go from B1 to B4,” explains Alex. “B1 tends to be totally blind players, who have no sight whatsoever or light perception, and then it goes up to B2, B3, B4. 

“For our game, in competition, it’s B2 to B4, we have four B2s in our current squad, but we don’t have any B1s – although we do have a couple that are training.”

Visually impaired rugby officially launched in 2017, kicking off by taking a squad of players to New Zealand during the British & Irish Lions tour to raise exposure at the highest level. It kickstarted the sport, both there [where they now have almost a dozen sides] and in England, where Harlequins have a side under their banner and others, including Sale Sharks, Cardiff Blues and Wasps, are looking to follow suit. 

There’s also a second adult side in East London, and two junior sides, collectively they form a playing pool of 300. 

While they took an England side to Japan last month to play in a three-Test series against the Rugby World Cup host nation. On a more local basis, the two adult sides don’t just face each other. “We had a game with Harlequins Amateurs,” explains Alex, “They used it for a bit of fitness and brought down ten to twelve lads. We played the same rules, and some of them used simulation goggles, that reflect what it’s like to be visually impaired.”

Jack Pearce

They’re continually ironing out creases in the game, with Alex keen to highlight some of the details they have to consider for every game. “We came across a few challenges,” he says. “Like where the game is played, it can’t be too noisy or close to a train track, as the players won’t hear the instructions. It has to be near public transport, because the players can’t drive. And the referee has to be very clear with communications, because you can’t just say the ball is ‘over here’, where’s ‘over here?’”

Their first ambassador was Andy Robinson, the former coach of England and Scotland and newly-appointed Romania head coach. “He’s been phenomenal in developing coaching guidelines, the laws, making it as accessible as possible to everyone and generally in the way the game has been created,” says Alex. 

Andy, for his part, had a personal reason for wanting to get involved. “My father had been blind through multiple sclerosis,” explains Andy. “He’d come to my matches and have the game talked to him, so I always had an interest in visually impaired sport. 

“He was an ex-policeman, and his former superintendent would come with me, whether I was playing or coaching, and explain what was happening.”

Of all the rules created, Andy feels the set-piece was key, even if it was uncontested. “You need the scrum and the lineout, not only so that it’s not rugby league, but also because it draws people in and creates space elsewhere on the pitch – it’s as close to seven-a-side as you can get.

“I love the game of rugby,” continues Andy, “that’s why I wanted to get involved in this game, because I’m so passionate about rugby that I want everyone to have the chance to experience it.”

Another active ambassador has been Ian McKinley, the Irish fly-half who retired from the game in 2011 after losing the sight in his left eye, only to return three years later with bespoke goggles and get back, eventually, to the top of the game with Pro 14 side Benetton.  

“I  am a player with a disability, and I don’t hide away from it, I don’t make it an excuse, but I consider myself very lucky, some of those guys have ten per cent vision which makes simple things in life very difficult.

“They’ve got so much commitment, some of them travel so far for a
training session, travelling from Manchester or Wales just for two-and-a-half-hours of training. 

“Since my accident in 2010, the amount of messages I continue to get from that day to now, of people in similar situations, or who know of someone else… We’ve  now got the French guy who played in Top 14 playing with goggles, Julian Savea  wore them during the Rugby World Cup, and there’s another Fijian winger in Toulon wearing them.

“The list of players looking to partake in something like this will grow. Educating people that there is something is key.”

The growth of goggles could be key. “There are 2,000 people registered to use them since they came in in 2014, which is a fairly big number that’ll grow. 

Si with VI Roses team-mates Chris Styles, left, and Matt Lancett, right

“As human beings we’re sceptical the first time we see things,” continues Ian. “There’s this perception that rugby is getting softer, and going more and more towards American football, but the eye area is so important. You only have to see how many guys come off the pitch with cuts below or to the side of their eyes. If it gives people confidence to play, kids in particular, that can only be a good thing. 

“Rugby is only about being open to everyone: tall, short, slow, fast, that’s the great thing about the game. It should apply to the visually impaired too.”

Si Ledwith has always been blind in his left eye, with poor sight in his right. “Growing up was tricky,” he admits. “I didn’t live in a great area in Suffolk, and I got the usual – bullied – I was a small kid as well, very short, very skinny, and I kind of suffered for all of it. There’s some very horrible kids out there,  mate.” 

But he did have determination, and parents who were very good at, in his own words, “making me do stuff”. It meant that despite his visual impairments, he still made strides. “I was riding a bike before my siblings, and there’s nothing wrong with them,” he says. 

The bullying had an impact, as you’d expect. “I spent a lot of time trying to make sure that nobody thought I had visual impairment, because I saw myself as a target and didn’t want to be treated any different,” he says. “The last thing I wanted anybody to say was ‘what you do is amazing’.”

How did you hide it? “It’s just your mannerisms,” he says. “You know the TV is in the room, and you can’t see it, but, well, still look at it, even if you can’t see it, then you look like everyone else.

“You just need to use your brain a little,” he says. “You go into new place and don’t know where the toilet is, but you get shown it once, then you remember it. Stuff like that, a lot of people don’t do that and are always asking people for stuff, and that’s a different confidence level, but I got the desired effect from what I did. Actually a lot of people will think I can see a lot more than I can – although in some settings that’s not overly useful, so I can be a bit of a catch 22.”

Sport had been a source of confidence ever since he was introduced to visually impaired cricket. “I first played it when I was eleven or twelve, then I got scouted when I was fourteen, and invited to an England training session and got in the squad at fifteen,” he says. “I went to a world cup in India at sixteen, and was the youngest-ever player at the time.

Ryan Jones

“It was amazing,” he continues, “but that was a hell of a long time to go off as a kid on a men’s tour. I then did the T20 world cup in India a couple of years ago, and being older – 33 – that was a completely different experience. It was one of the hardest tests of me as an athlete though, we played nine games over 11 days in seven cities, phenomenal. I’ve also played in three Ashes series and played all over the world.” 

The batsman [his best international knock was 134 n/o] and ‘part-time’ bowler didn’t have all his problems solved by sport, at least not at first. In his teens and early-20s he struggled to find his place. “I was in a gang,” he says, “not like a London gang, but I dealt drugs, quite a lot. I almost got caught too. I was quite lucky, they let me go, but another lad got caught and was sent to prison for twelve years.” 

Andy Sellens was Si’s first cricket coach and knew about his situation, making a move that changed his life. “He then made a decision to bring me [to the Change Foundation] when I was 22 or 23, and without the Foundation I’m not sure what I’d be doing now.”

Rugby has now replaced cricket in Si’s life. “I had an accident on the cricket pitch and got hit in the eye with a cricket ball, which left me without any sight for two weeks,” explains Si. “I had a haemorrhage behind the eyes. 

“I was told if it bled within seven days there would be nothing they could do, I would lose all sight. Even though I didn’t have much sight, it’s all relative, so I couldn’t carry on with cricket. Fortunately rugby then kicked off.”

Playing a big role in setting up the sport, and then making the on-field line-up that travelled to New Zealand, Si has been at the heart of the sport from inception to today. “New Zealand has now got ten or eleven clubs, which is phenomenal,” he says. “It’s growing here and growing there, it’s brought people out of the woodwork, and when we went to New Zealand we needed to look the part, and show it wasn’t just played by people who dropped the ball all the time, and by people who were in good nick. It needed to have the rugby elements in it, and the beauty of the game is that you still get the patterns of play that you get in mainstream sevens. We made sure we still have rugby posts too, so even though there’s no open play kicking, there’s conversions.” 

There is an England team now, albeit called the VI Roses due to England Rugby’s stringent trademark rules, and Si is very much part of it, including the recent tour to Japan during the Rugby World Cup. It’s come a long way, which won’t have surprised Si, as he saw huge sporting leaps made during his time with the Change Foundation. “I used to work with the gangs in London to deliver sport programmes, get them out of gangs and into more positive outcomes. As I wasn’t always a good boy myself and managed to turn life around, I knew about change. 

“We changed the landscape of programmes like that,” he says. “We didn’t go down the same route as others where you relied on referrals from probation, we’d actually go on to targeted estates known for anti-social and gang behaviour. 

“We’d visit the estate and approach people,” explains Si. “which obviously brings its own dangers – sometimes we’d get chased off, threatened, all sorts of things. In White City we once had a gun pulled on us. It was a makeshift one too, so it’s even more dangerous as wherever you’re pointing it, it could easily shoot someone else. We had a couple of incidents with people trying to hit you or beat you, but it was generally okay. Once you got the confidence of the good, it was incredibly successful – we won a global award for it, it was great. It was painstaking work though, it took over your life.

“I did it for eight years and we helped over 500 kids, it was really about long-term mentoring and making an impact for a smaller number, so it’s hard to talk massive numbers with that sort of work and the kind of capacity we had. 

“We had a success rate of getting 80 per cent out of a gang and into a job. That was based on six-month tracking process, I’m still in touch with boys from eight years ago – that’s why I’m what I am now.”

VI Roses player Daniel Lineker and the Change Foundation’s Alex Bassan

Today, Si makes his living from a third sport – football. “I represent players at all levels, from non-league to Premier League,” he says. “I manage them, take care of contract negotiations, transfers. We’ve got about 40 to 50 on our books.

“As you can imagine, running programmes with gangs, there’s a lot of boys who are very talented on the streets and, unofficially, we helped them on to professional football and boxing, but they always came back to me for advice, even if they had an agent. A lot were not getting the right advice, a lot didn’t make it for one reason or another, and a couple who had the talent but ended up working in Ladbrokes. There was a gap in the market for more of an agency with a conscience, and at first I helped them out with a few contacts and was doing it part-time, but now I’m full-time.”

Gareth travels to London every month for training sessions, and, together with Si, made the side that travelled to Japan. Even if he hadn’t, just playing rugby again means everything. “It makes me feel emotional thinking about it,” he says about the sport. “How can I describe it – it’s liberating, to get a second chance to get back into the sport I loved. 

“I wasn’t finished with the sport,” continues Gareth, “I can still compete, I’ve got the skills, the instinct is still there. 

“So many disability sports are so diluted, in blind football you walk around – which is fine for some people – but with VI rugby it’s full-on sevens touch, that just happens to be played by loads of guys who can’t see too well. 

“When you’re on that pitch you’re a rugby player, for 40 minutes you’re playing rugby, not disability sport, not visually-impaired sport, just rugby. The skill level is really high, the fitness level is quite elite, certainly with England, nobody is treated differently, it’s so normal. I’m not supposed to use that term, but that’s what it is.

“Because it’s come from rugby people, it is rugby, not touchy feely ‘let’s make it nice and safe’, we want to be treated the same as everyone else and this allows us to do that.”

Through visually impaired rugby and also mixed ability rugby [with the Cardiff Chiefs] Gareth has now played at both Twickenham and the Principality  Stadium, and is hoping to get a Cardiff Blues side off the ground too. “It’s brought a hell of a lot to my life,” he says, “it’s brought me an identity as a sports person, it’s given me goals to achieve, physical goals, it’s made me really happy. It may sound daft, but it really has, you miss that camaraderie when you play rugby, that sense of belonging, and now I’ve got that back, I’ve made connections with people I wouldn’t have before.

“Both my children play rugby, Nia (fourteen) and Lloyd (eleven), so for them to see me playing is key for them, it makes me more of a role model perhaps, and it’s nice for family unity, the three of us playing rugby. 

“When I first found out [about the sight loss], I was lost,” he admits. “I didn’t know what was coming, so to be in this position now, with two kids watching me play rugby, well, it’s a dream, it really is.”  

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Han Lee De Boer

This extract was taken from issue 8 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

If you’d like get involved with VI rugby, either as a player, coach or sponsor, contact Alex Bassan on  alexbassan@changefdn.org.uk thechangefoundation.org.uk