When Gemma Darvill’s dad, Les, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease aged 58, joining a walking football team stopped him from confining himself to his own home, and she believes the game saved his life.
What she could never have foreseen was that, eight years later, she would find herself coaching the first England women’s Parkinson’s team, helping transform the lives of women with the disease from all across the country. She is set to embark on a journey to Toronto to help spread awareness of the ways in which walking football can help put the brakes on the progression of Parkinson’s symptoms.
A teacher at Swallowfield primary school in Woburn Sands, in Milton Keynes, Darvill’s interest in walking football was sparked by supporting her dad. She now coaches what is believed to be the first walking football team specifically dedicated to women with Parkinson’s, the Parkinson’s Pioneers, who train in Solihull and have seen a tenfold increase in their membership in just over three years. That led to her appointment as the coach of the first England women’s national side.
There are reportedly about 166,000 people in the UK living with Parkinson’s disease. It is a progressive brain condition for which there is no cure, but known treatments can help reduce the severity of the main symptoms. Darvill, who says exercise “helped slow down the progression of the disease” for her dad, recalled: “When he was first diagnosed, it hits you hard. But football genuinely saved his life.
“At first, he didn’t want to leave the house. He used to have a season ticket at Tottenham [but] he gave that up. He didn’t tell any of his friends. He just stopped doing everything. He really struggled with life in general, [even] getting out of bed. And then we found this football session. His team’s called Fighting Fit Football [based at Watford’s training ground]. I took him along one week and he’s never looked back since.
“So, just to be able to give back a little bit, I guess that’s why I still do it: to help others who get diagnosed, to show them that there is still a life after being diagnosed with the disease and you can meet lots of incredible people, and still try to do things as normally as possible.”
Darvill, who has played football since she was 10, was spotted cheering for her dad on the sidelines of a tournament at St George’s Park and was promptly asked by Annie Booth, the founder of the Parkinson’s Pioneers, if she would be interested in helping set up the team. To Darvill, helping out felt natural: “I’ve always coached football as well as played, and I was a teacher, so I used to run football camps for kids in the school holidays.”
Booth and Darvill have seen the Parkinson’s Pioneers blossom into a flourishing community, explaining: “I remember our very first training session, it was only three of us. We now have over 40 ladies coming to the sessions. It’s incredible.
“They use it as a social network as well. So after the sessions, everyone stays for a bit of food, a conversation, and they can just discuss like their symptoms, how they’re coping. And we’re family now, really, if I’m honest. Everyone just helps each other out.
“We train at Solihull purely because the ladies come from all over the country. We have ladies from Manchester, we have myself coming from Milton Keynes, we have people in Devon.
“So it’s the most central location that we could find to try to make it as fair as possible for everyone travelling. So we try to meet up once a month and then we enter the tournaments as well.”
As well as prohibiting running, walking football includes several different rules to the mainstream game. There is no offside rule, no heading, no throw-ins and it is a non-contact game. Darvill says: “I’d say the tactics are the same [in general]. But you can’t tackle from the side or from behind in walking football – it has to be face-on.
“Everyone with Parkinson’s has a very different level of the condition. The walking element just helps keep them all safe. We have a brilliant physio on board as well who is specifically a Parkinson’s physio, which is brilliant, and she helps us a lot with the warm-ups and the cool-downs and just makes sure that ladies are getting what they need. It makes their brain think about something else. [For example] I’ve got one lady who can’t walk in a straight line but if you put a sports ladder down in front of her, she can walk through it. It’s really interesting.”
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The growth of the Pioneers meant that Darvill was the natural pick when the Walking Football Association (WFA) was launching the first England women’s Parkinson’s team with trials last year. Then, in August this year, the WFA and the Football Association announced a new partnership that will install the FA as walking football’s governing body in England with the WFA now the delivery partner for the game. The collaboration was partly aimed at benefits such as being able to streamline the registration of referees and agree on a unified set of rules. Darvill adds: “That’s a positive, going forward, that they’re coming together a little bit more.”
Darvill’s England team play six-a-side and the players range in age from 36 to 66. They have held training sessions in Watford, Droitwich and Bedford so far, but are about to cross the Atlantic to join the England men’s Parkinson’s team on a landmark trip to Canada for an international showcase of the benefits of walking football and a series of invitational friendlies.
The team travel on Saturday for one week in Toronto. The teams have been crowdfunding to try to help cover the course of the trip. Darvill’s own fundraising page has raised over £400 and a wider fundraising page for both the men’s and women’s sides has drawn in more than £17,000. Darvill says: “We’re doing it because we want to raise awareness of Parkinson’s in Canada and help those out there with Parkinson’s. We’re trying to showcase sort of what we do, to try to reach more people.
“We’re going to play two American teams when we’re out there, an over-40s team and over-60s all women’s walking football team [non-disabled], and then we’re going to play some men’s teams as well. We’re running a Parkinson’s fundraising day too, where we will run the session ourselves, we’ll put on the coaching drills and have a bit of fun to try to get as many people in Canada interested.”
For Darvill, it is a mission with a deeply personal motivation, with her own gratitude to walking football for how it is helping her dad continuing to drive her to help others with the condition.
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