Wheelchair Super League Grand Final boost for powersports charity

A Liverpool-based sports charity for disabled people has been selected to take part in an exhibition match at the Wheelchair Super League Grand Final in Manchester this coming weekend.

The GB Power Hockey Association will have an exhibition match at half-time in Sunday's match between the Halifax Panthers and the London Roosters at the National Basketball Performance Centre in Manchester.

Players from the Association's hub at the Greenbank Sports Academy in Liverpool and from its taster sessions with the Warrington Wolves Community Foundation will take to the field for a 12 minute exhibition match during the break in play.

Power hockey is a sport that’s played in electric wheelchairs with people (who often have cerebral palsy or Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy - two life-limiting conditions) chasing after a hockey-size ball and physical contact is permitted using specialised bumpers made by Liverpool's Powersports Engineering CIC.

The Association is aiming to pitch the sport as an accessible form of contact sport for rugby or NFL fans who use powered wheelchairs to get around.

"For many people who don't have the dexterity, co-ordination or physical capacity to use a manual wheelchair, contact sports can seem like something we can only spectate on and aren't able to play in. But we're looking forward to smashing people's expectations and showing the crowd at the Wheelchair Super League Grand Final just what people with "life-limiting" conditions and impairments can do with the right support and infrastructure", Ellis Palmer from the GB Power Hockey Association said.

The GB Power Hockey Association has been offering its sport as a contact-based option for powerchair users over the last year through taster sessions with the Warrington Wolves Community Foundation, the Batley Sporting Foundation, and Widnes Vikings’ wheelchair rugby league team. Its efforts to host taster sessions around the country have been aided by financial support from Slater & Gordon solicitors.

The charity also runs an annual British Power Hockey League and, in November, will hold the GBPHA Slater & Gordon Cup to give its players around the more competitive opportunities.

“Power hockey is an emerging and inclusive sport, which offers a fun, fast-paced and competitive environment for power wheelchair users and individuals with profound and complex disabilities", Amanda Hunt, education and disability manager at Warrington Wolves Community Foundation said at a taster session in June. 

“Seeing everyone come together with such teamwork, communication and energy was truly inspiring", Ms Hunt added, with Warrington potentially becoming a power hockey hub as part of the Warrington Wolves Community Foundation's "Total Sport" offer in the coming months.

It is hoped that the exhibition match will open up the sport to new audience of people with lived experience of disability.