GROWING up in London, all I wanted to play was football. But as my high school was just 500 meters from the Arsenal Football Club stadium, everyone was obsessed with football and competition for places was fierce.
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Being tall, I was encouraged to play basketball instead. In other circumstances I'm sure I would have loved it. It was a team sport, which I've always preferred to solo sports, and at least the ball was round ... but I just wanted to play football.
As an adult I played football and a bit of tennis, and worked in various physically demanding jobs. I was a telecoms engineer, climbing poles and broadcast masts, before setting up a garden design and landscaping business with my Australian wife Penny.
We both enjoyed the outdoors; camping, walking and cycling. In order to bring additional skills into the business, I tapped into my love of heights and trained as a tree surgeon. Then, on April 1 2005, when Penny was six months pregnant with our first child, I fell from a tree and landed on a garage roof six meters below. Everything stopped.
I only had one injury, which was a displaced vertebra in my spine. Unfortunately, this resulted in a spinal cord injury and I was instantly paralysed from the waist down.
Going through my rehabilitation in the spinal unit was tough. All I could think of was the things I could no longer do. Even when I thought about becoming a dad, everything I pictured seemed impossible. No lifting my child onto my shoulders, no kicking the football in the park.
However, I knew I was going to become a dad regardless, so I focussed on getting myself as ready as I could be. In this regard I was fortunate, as I was in the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympics.
As someone who loved sport, this worked for me. Rehab involved archery, table tennis ... and wheelchair basketball. I'll be honest, I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. After all these years, I was back to not being able to play football while being encouraged to play basketball.
I was discharged from hospital a week before our daughter was born and we got on with life. I wrote a book about my experience and embarked on a new career as a journalist.
A year after leaving hospital, I was encouraged to have another go at wheelchair basketball and I quickly realised it allowed to access something I was keenly missing: Team sports, and especially those moments when it all comes together. However, life was still very demanding, especially when our son was born. I played with the Hackney Sparrows, before life threw up a different kind of challenge when we decided to up sticks and move to Australia.
Gerringong beckoned. It's where my in-laws live so it made perfect sense. I'll be honest, as a wheelchair user? Less so. Let's just say I can think of flatter places to live ...
So, new home, new town, new country. Then one day, as I got out of my car in Stocklands car park in Shellharbour, I was accosted by a large Finn.
The imposing figure in a wheelchair on the other side of the car park made a bee line for me. He introduced himself as Eino Okkonen (at the time I had no idea just how many times he has done this to prospective wheelchair basketball players), and invited me to come to training with the Roller Hawks development team, the Illawarra Eagles.
He told me they had plenty of spare basketball chairs. Between Eino and another great nurturer of the sport's grassroots, Joe Jankowski, I was welcomed into the fold.
So began a new chapter. I played for the Eagles for a couple of years before being encouraged to train with the Roller Hawks.
I went to the first session feeling way out of my depth, but if I've learned anything from adjusting to life with a disability, it's that comfort zones can disappear in the blink of an eye. It was definitely a big step up but the team were very encouraging and supportive, and so I joined the squad. I was fifty years of age and playing elite sport.
I got a few minutes on court in my first season, and we won our third consecutive National Wheelchair Basketball League title, although I knew I was along for the experience.
Then COVID happened. After a few months of lockdown, we returned to training and have continued ever since. During that time I've learned a lot. I feel like I can contribute now. This weekend, I'll find out.
The squad has been bolstered by the return of top points scorer in 2019, Tristan Knowles, after eight years in Victoria. Tristan was part of the first Roller Hawks team that took to the court. Twenty seasons later, he's back where he started.
When Tristan moved to Wollongong from Canberra to complete his university degree and train with the Roller Hawks, it was because he had been convinced to do so. Who convinced him? The same man who booked me a seat on this rollercoaster: Eino Okkonen.
Tim Rushby-Smith is a journalist, author and Roller Hawk.
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