Even though there are certain areas where American Football is a closed shop, the game has opened its doors to people interested in taking it up, with plenty of examples in the Scottish Flag Football Leagues of mixed gender teams and some involvement at kitted level.

However with the development of the sport at grass roots level, the opportunities do exist for people with special needs taking part.

And now plans are underway to develop a new form of contact American Football in Scotland for people in wheelchairs.

It may sound far fetched to some, but a version for wheelchair users is active in the States and now Inverness Blitz Coach, Robbie Paulin, the UK Young Coach of the Year, is working to bring the version to this country.

To find out more about his plans and hopefully answer some questions that are no doubt running through your minds then here is a question and answer session with the man himself, on the very subject.

When did you first come up with the idea of Wheelchair Football.

Craig Stewart, who is full time with the Inverness Blitz with ProjectScotland, is a wheelchair user and this sparked us to get going with this project. We have had several meetings with Highland Disability Sport and have now set up a group that will hopefully get Wheelchair American Football off the ground.

Has it been done in the UK before.

I think there might have been something in Newcastle a sort of non-contact wheelchair American Football game. I think it was similar to ultimate Football (throw, catch, stop, throw) sort of thing.

In the article it was referred to as contact, can you explain how that would work.

We are trying to pull together funding to purchase special Rhino Wheelchairs. They are high impact chairs with protective guards around the feet and legs etc. There has been rules made up and blocking and tackling is allowed. Tackling is defined as a bump that is enough to change the course of the ball carrier. Other rules that are seen in the real game such as blocking in the back has been defined as any contact behind the back axle.

How different would it be to the version that is played in the States.

We have found very little information about any wheelchair American Football in the USA. I think we found a group in Cleveland when we were researching this that played a sort of non-contact wheelchair American Football in parking lots and basketball courts. As far as I know I think they just play Wheelchair Rugby (like the game seen in this country). I know that the Disney Wide World of Sport have hosted Wheelchair Rugby before.

Would it be all wheelchair or would you be looking at mixing able bodied players as well.

When speaking to Charlie Forbes who works for Highland Disability Sport he said that wouldn't see anything wrong with able bodied people possibly making up numbers if need be in teams and playing along side the regular participants.

Have you had practise games at all.

We will be do a taster session at a wheelchair sports day next week at Inverness Leisure.

Have you received any feedback from BAFA on this.

We are looking at this as a Blitz initiative at the moment along with Highland Disability Sport.

What about the Scottish Clubs, what do they think about the idea.

We haven't mentioned it to them yet.

Is funding the biggest headache in getting this off the ground.

Yeah we have received a massive quote for the chairs. £2895 (that's exlcuding tax by the way!) per chair!!!

What sort of time scale are you looking at when it comes to getting this off the ground.

That all depends on funding. But looking realistically I can't see us getting to the proper full contact game until next season (2008).


And what are your long term plans for Wheelchair Football, Leagues. Internationals etc.

I think we would like to run it locally first. Once it is tested we can come up with a standard proceedure and be able to guide other clubs to getting something like this set up in their area. Of course hopefully this would lead onto league structures etc.


What about other special needs like Cerabal Palsy, Autistic etc.

We are kind of trying to do one thing at a time. Because of course along with Wheelchair American Football we have to develop the regular game as well!