When Nicole Christodoulou was growing up, she wanted to be a Matilda. Just like thousands of kids across Australia, she’d come home from school every day and watch YouTube videos of players doing tricks, then go outside and practise until she mastered them. It didn’t matter where she was or what the field looked like — whether it was outdoors, indoors, or in her backyard—as long as she had a ball at her feet.

But when she was 21, that dream came crashing down.

“I had two strokes, so I lost the use of my arm and my leg. I had to learn to stand up again, sit up straight, to walk; I couldn’t do any of that,” Christodoulou said.

“The first time the physio came to my room they said, ‘You need to set a goal, something to work towards’. My goal was to be able to play football again. I didn’t even think about walking, I just wanted to play. Now I’m here, and it means a lot to me, it makes me emotional whenever I think about it.”

“Here” is the 2019 National Cerebral Palsy Football Championships, which took place in Sydney in October. Nicole, alongside her friends Matilda Mason and Tahlia Blanshard, were three of five women invited to play in the tournament for the very first time. It’s a sign of the rapid progress women’s cerebral palsy football is making around the country.

Their entry-points into football have been as varied as their life experiences. While Nicole has been playing her whole life, Matilda and Tahlia only took up the sport recently after being invited by fellow players or members of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, who run gala days in a number of major cities.

The Cerebral Palsy Alliance run gala days in a number of major cities. Photograph: Supplied

“Last year, the CP Alliance offered for me to go to a football gala day and I laughed. I didn’t go,” Blanshard said. “A few months after that, December of last year, [Football NSW] had a come-and-try day. I rocked up with a singlet, tights, no boots, no shin pads, and joggers. Ever since then, I’ve been training for football.”

These women aren’t new to the world of sport, though. Blanshard represented Australia in swimming at the Cerebral Palsy World Games in 2018 and is part of the Australian Development Team, while Mason found her way into the game after playing hockey and doing kickboxing.

But football is now moving ahead of the curve when it comes to providing team opportunities for people with cerebral palsy. Not only are platforms like the championships becoming more common, but the growing social network means more prospective players are taking part — and these women are at the centre of that push.

“I love it to pieces,” said Mason, who travels two hours each way to train in Perth. “I appreciate it so much, all the opportunities and the people I’ve met, not just in WA but now over here. I’ve grown the passion to help Brad [Scott, current Pararoo] to broaden it to females, and then also to regional communities. We want to bring the next generation in, and I don’t think any of us will give up until that happens.”

Christodoulou agreed: “I feel like maybe I’m the chosen one, so that I can inspire people. I know both worlds, so I can help as many people as I can, not just through sport but through everything: their daily lives, their confidence levels, and believing in themselves. It’s not easy having a disability, especially if it’s invisible. A lot of the time you can’t see it, you can’t see what goes on in people’s heads, or what people feel.”

The two main themes of our conversation were exposure and education, both for people with cerebral palsy and for the able-bodied people around them. Football programs like those run through the Pararoos Development Centre, Football NSW and the Cerebral Palsy Alliance provide a space for conversations around what representation, support and success in sport can mean for people with disabilities.

“I do a lot of stuff with the CP Alliance,” Blanshard said. “Every single day someone always asks, ‘Can we play football now?’. I can’t wait to be able to go up to those kids and say, ‘Yeah, you can go play football now’. There’s girls and boys, but even the boys didn’t know there were opportunities to do CP football.

“I don’t even mind what sport they go into. Whether they come up to me and say, ‘I want to do football’, or ‘I want to do swimming’’, or ‘I want to be able to have friends with CP’’, or ‘I want to know, how did you get through school? How did you do your homework?’.

“It is the case that the sports have given me the opportunity to start conversations with people I never would have met in any other way. It’s important that the kids see it, because on [bad] days, those are the ones where it’s easiest to feel like you’re the one that’s different. Suddenly they think, ‘Oh, I’m having a bad day, but I’m still going to run out, I’m still going to kick that ball, I’m still going to go and jump in the pool’, and all of a sudden, that is something that brings them joy.”

Football Federation Australia has taken up the call for better support and exposure of cerebral palsy football, providing increased funding through the national teams’ new CBA and organising for the Pararoos to play their first international game on home soil since the 2000 Paralympics last Saturday, which was also live-streamed on Kayo.

Christodoulou and Blanshard were there, cheering on their friends from the stands, wishing it could be them representing the Paratildas. It’s a goal well within reach as the International Federation of CP Football plans to host its first Women’s World Cup in Barcelona next year.

“I think the magic word is awareness … awareness, communication, put it out on social media, put it out on the TV,” Blanshard said. “Let the world know that stuff happens and you don’t have to be the top of your sport to be able to do these things. We were so lucky to get this opportunity, but we’re not superstars. We’re still just fairly ordinary women with CP that just fell in love with the sport.”

“We’re human too, we deserve a chance,” Christodoulou said. “It’s a way for us to get our story out to the kids as well, to inspire them. I was discriminated against a lot, and I’m sure all the people here have been discriminated against a lot because of their disability.

“Tell your story to these kids, that’ll keep them going. It’ll change a lot of lives, not just one, or your own. Sometimes the people around you are your inspirations.”

