Making sense of the National League South
This weekend, while attending a National League South game between St Albans City and Bath City, a mate turned to me and said: “That is so poor, that Bath attack came about because there were three 50/50s and we lost them all”.
I looked it him with my mouth wide open. It was an incredible insight, or at least I thought it was, because the mate who had said it was born with congenital glaucoma and hasn’t been able to see since he was a baby.
Since meeting, and recording a podcast, with David Clarke, our country’s most successful blind footballer and an inspirational character to me, we have agreed to do two things: go for a pint and watch a St Albans City game together. I’m still looking forward to the pint but the footy didn’t disappoint.
David told us on the Football Journeys podcast that he’s learned to completely decode crowd noise but that doesn’t do justice to what he, and so many other blind and visually impaired people are able to do, missing the one sense that so many of us (and particularly me, as I’m hard of hearing) take for granted. He knows his surroundings (and is very conscious of the “detritus” that he bemoans on Harpenden High Street). When we first sat and had a coffee outside a Costa, he knew as well as I did where the advertising hoarding we were sat near was. The only difference between us was that I knew what it said.
David isn’t remarkable because he’s blind, he’s just remarkable. Charismatic and both self deprecating and self aggrandising in that humourous way that I am always drawn to. From his comment that his wife was condemned to the biggest mistake of her life when she came over to stroke his dog at Uni, to his answer to the question “What striker would you choose to score a penalty if your life depended on it?” Me. He’s a complex and brilliant man that has achieved so much. Not least 148 appearances for his country in blind football.
It was a superb game of football, St Albans rather fortuitously coming out 3–2 winners, but my attention was drawn to David throughout. We’re all distracted in this technological age and David was no different. Whilst I couldn’t stop checking in to see the latest score at Sincil Bank as my team Gillingham were desperately trying to get three points to help our relegation fight (we won 2–0) David was the same — checking up on his home town club Wigan Athletic (who had a bad day, going down 3–0 at home to Sunderland) and all the other scores using the listening function to scroll the Live Scores App.
But it was his insight, and also ability to chip into the hubbub of conversation as the game went on, that was so remarkable. From chats about the Roman towns of Britain, house prices in leafy Hertfordshire and the Russian invasion of Ukraine (this was, after all, the football equivalent of shopping in Waitrose) I could not believe, with one sense down, how far ahead of me this fella was. “Ooh, sub being made, that’s much needed, [unnamed player to protect those judged to have played poorly by Clarkie] has offered us nothing today”. I hadn’t even noticed that a sub was about to be made.
After the game, when I got home, I posted the photograph in this blog (of me, my Dad and Clarkie) on Twitter and something quite lovely happened. A chap popped up, who had done work with the RNIB and had seen David at an event before, and said “I was at a work thing a few years ago and daren’t go up and say hello”. David, of course, responded and, by the end of the thread, the pair were agreeing that David would go and speak to a group of visually impaired children in Luton. Not only did the whole exchange show how social media can be brilliant and positive sometimes it also confirmed something that David had said to us on the podcast …
He’s used to people saying that they hadn’t been brave enough to come over and chat. That might in part be because of Clarkie’s legendary status (and certainly was for this chap who worked with visually impaired people) but, with blind people in general, it’s often because sighted people are sometimes so scared of offending, or just want to avoid what we see as problems and challenges that we could do without. Ignorance breeds fear. We need to embrace all differences and sighted people can do so much more to make blind and partially sighted people’s lives easier and better.
If someone I knew had seen me at Clarence Park they would pop over and say hello (and it did happen, one of the Dads from my son’s cricket club) but if someone who knows a blind person sees them there is sometimes a hesitation: will it be awkward? I’ll have to go and say my name to them because they can’t see me. They won’t know I’m holding my hand out to shake hands so I’ll have to instigate it.
If David can achieve what he has achieved: personally, professionally and in a sporting context, then we can come to terms with that awkwardness and try and do a bit more.
Go and chat to a blind person you know or have met. If you think a blind person needs help, ask them (they can always say “no”) and make life a bit better on social media by typing out an Alt-text on photos that you post and, most of all, if you see an absolute legend of disability football and the visually impaired community, go over and say hello.
