Fast, Fierce And Not For The Faint-Hearted: The World Of Wheelchair Rugby

There is only one way to play wheelchair rugby...and that is to get stuck in.

Stu Robinson, more often than not, is right at the heart of the action.

"It is pretty much my life.

"If you are not in the chair training, I am in the gym training trying to get myself fitter and better.

"Literally we are away playing with club teams and then we are away training with the national team for Great Britain," he says.

"It is a massively different kind of fitness.

"In the military you are all about running with weight and seeing how many press ups you can do and things like that.

"With this it is more about an all-rounder's fitness - it is all well and good having the cardio fitness so you can push faster and for longer.

"But it is also good having the strength within, not just physical strength but the mental strength, because there are so many emotions you go through in the game."

"You need to get yourselves up there and get yourself ready for each game."

"Every year we have a tryout for new guys to come through and to prove themselves and to try and make it onto the squad.

"Obviously it is pretty tough, not only for the new guys, but it is tough for us to try and keep our places in the squad.

"Competition is pretty tough so we try and perform our best and get selected for the year ahead."

Stu has been with the elite squad since 2017 and as he has developed, so has the sport.

"This year we have been pretty tough on ourselves, obviously after the way things went - we went to Australia for the World Championships last year.

"We came fourth which was pretty good but obviously we have gone behind the scenes, we have done a lot of work, a lot of video analysis to work on the teams that are about to play, so hopefully the ground work has been put in - we just now have to go out there and perform on court.

While Stu came to the sport through the Invictus Games, Ryan Cowling’s journey has been a little different.

Fresh into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in 1994, Ryan had just turned 18 when he was involved in a car accident - he broke his neck leaving him paralysed from the chest down.

Playing for club side West Coast Crash for the last ten years, he was 40 when he was selected for GB.

"It is so different to anything that I had experienced. I had been in a wheelchair for the best part of 15 years, and I had not experienced anything like this.

"I had seen bits about it, so I was aware of it.

"It is fast, it is brutal at times and it can be painful as well - if you fall wrongly you can hurt yourself."

Despite such a short lived military career, Ryan still finds plenty of common ground with Stu.

"It is good to have somebody with a military background in here as well.

"You have a bit of banter with each other, and it is good fun. We have come from very different backgrounds, different avenues into the sport."

"Stu has done a lot of work with the charities which are involved around the military. I have not - we seem to have just collided a little bit.

"We play in the same lineups as well which is great, so there is always a bit of banter there."

Stu said: "One of the big draws for me, once I left the military, was to come into a team sport.

"Not only do we have that camaraderie, and that banter, but to have someone who used to be services as well, you kind of know where they are coming from.

"Sometimes, if you think something is a little bit dark a little bit touching the line, at least they get the joke as well." 

There’s already a scheme in place to get more armed forces personnel into the sport.

Having Stu and Ryan both representing can only help.

Two men, two very different journeys…but now with the same goal.

The King Power Quad Nations will take place at the Morningside Arena in Leicester from 1-3 March.