“If you’d said to me when I was told I couldn’t play rugby league again that it’s going to be the best thing to ever happen to me, I’d have said ‘you’re lying’. But discovering wheelchair rugby league, which is even better, has been a blessing.”
Rugby league has always been an important part of Finlay O’Neill’s life. When he dislocated a knee while playing in a game at the age of 16, he put it down to the rigours of the sport.
The knee popped back into place but continued to cause issues, leaving the Halifax teenager struggling on the field and with increasing pain off it too.
After extensive medical tests, he was diagnosed with shallow kneecaps and hypermobility. His sporting hopes seemed to be over.
But after a lot of family encouragement, he transferred his skills to wheelchair rugby league with Halifax Panthers. Over the past three years, O’Neill has enjoyed a meteoric rise. Now he is part of the England squad who will be defending their Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup title in Australia.
“I think the first thing that really struck me was how similar the wheelchair game is in many ways to the running game,” O’Neill, now 21, tells BBC Sport.
“From playing the running game, I had the rugby brain and skill – the ability to pass and see things happening, but I didn’t have the physical skill of being able to move in a wheelchair, as I don’t use one in my day-to-day life, and that was a big challenge.
“At the reserve or development level, if you’ve got good rugby knowledge, you can play the game, but you can’t just rely on those skills in the Super League. You have to learn how to manipulate the chair and move it around the pitch.
“When you’re playing a running sport, you just run and you don’t really have to think about it, but in the wheelchair game, you’ve got to think at the same time about moving your chair to where you want to be, catching a ball, passing it and quickly moving on to the next play.
“At my first Super League training session, I was chasing the others, but playing against quick players means you have to get faster. It has taken a lot of hard work to go from having no chair experience to get up to the skill level of the top players.”