7) The one with the 'Tablist'

My final game to prepare for the Games was in Sheffield. The Steelers, one of the most successful wheelchair basketball organisations in Great Britain, were having a pre-season friendly against Wakefield (who I'd already seen the week before when at Teesside). 

When you hear the name 'Sheffield Steelers', it evokes the memories of players such as Colin Price and Kev Hayes playing for GB years ago, or more recent names such as George Bates and Harry Brown. Currently, the vast majority of GB international players play professionally abroad (and have done for a number of years) due to there being no professional league in Great Britain at this time. But for George Bates, the decision to leave his Spanish club and return to Sheffield was in essence made by default when his disability classification was deemed to fall outside of the revised criteria from the International Paralympic Committee, essentially making him unemployed and unemployable as a professional player:

George Bates 1              George Bates 2

The review of player classification was always going to have casualties (including Canadian great David Eng), and I do not know enough about this exact situation to make any further comment on it, other than to say I feel a huge amount of sympathy for George, but it was great to see him pull on a shirt for Sheffield at this game. He made me smile throughout the game with witty comments such as "Come on Ben, gimme a break here - I'm unemployed now!" and the standard of his play was verging on sublime at times. 

His return to the UK will be of HUGE benefit domestically - his experience at club and international level is going to come in extremely useful as he takes on the role of Head Coach of Loughborough University's Women's Team. As mentioned above, there is currently no professional league in the UK, however the forthcoming 2021/2022 season will see the start of the first ever professional Women's League in the world. Bold, exciting stuff indeed and certainly a statement of intent from British Wheelchair Basketball for the future of our sport. 

Anyway, back to the game. 

As it had been in the North East the week before, Sheffield vs Teesside was run as a 3-person referee crew for me to refresh my memory of the mechanics we will be using next week(!) in Tokyo. My colleagues this time were Chris Stainton (a fellow international referee) and Joey 'Crawford' Fermor-Worrell. 

Sheffield also have a huge advantage of being able to draw on a number of highly experienced local table officials, and they were were able to set up a full table as well (eliminating the need for the referees to count the 24 second shot clock). One of these officials was my Tokyo-bound colleague Janine Timms, but another table official was there doing a job for the first time ever - my eldest son, Robert, whose role was to start and stop the game clock, as well as keep the score up to date on the score board. He was SO nervous that I could see his legs shaking under the table, but he listened magnificently to the expert support that 'Aunty Jan' gave him and did an amazing job.

Before he would agree to have a go at working on the table, I told Robert that he would have the help and guidance from someone with masses of experience sitting right next to him throughout. This reassured him, to which he replied 'Is Jan a good tablist then?' ('Table Official' being the correct term) Well congratulations, Roberto. You are officially a 'Tablist' to Janine and me from now on! 😜😜

In doing this game, Robert joined a long line of basketball officials from our family. My dad was a player, coach and referee. My mum was a table official for dad's games. Robert's mum was a table official for both running AND wheelchair basketball until recently and obviously there's me as well (I played and coached before focusing on refereeing). 

(Random trivia fact - this was NOT the first time Robert was on a basketball table... Ola (his mum) was pregnant with him when she was a table official for the Basketball England National Cup Final, which I was also refereeing - I'm not sure how many times a husband/wife combination has been appointed to a national final, let alone whilst being pregnant as well!)

So tablists now outnumber the referees in the family - I know 'Aunty Jan' will definitely approve of that!

I'll end this post with a quote from Robert on the journey home:

"I really liked how Jan explained things to me. She spoke to me like a person and not as a child and that was really nice. It made me feel grown up!" 

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