GoalBall
Well when I first heard about Goalball and the Blind Games in Birmingham, I was curious about what this was. OK, my first thoughts were it uses a ball and is a version of football played by the blind. Well, I was not far off it 3 aside with 3 goals and each person defends one goal. They roll the ball towards the other team hoping to score a goal. There is a 25-minute time limit for the whole game and the team with the most goals wins.
Typically, the players are blind or partially sighted and wear a blackout mask to even the playing field. However, a sighted person can also play as they also use a blackout mask, so regardless of your sight, everybody plays to the same rules e.g. 100% blind.
The ball had a bell of sorts and the referee asks for quiet before play starts as the players needs to hear the ball coming. Any external noise, chatter, phone going off etc, is frowned upon, so please be quiet when the game is in play.
Luckily my camera is mirrorless and can be set to silent, so is ideal for this kind of sport. Also, I now purchased an F2.8 lens making it a perfect combination for this sport, as I did have a lens with a F4-6 depending on the zoom setting, but in the low light of most playing areas, I could not get shots in focus or sharp as the shutter speed was below 1/100 of a second, and at a very high ISO. So the investment in a better pro lens after trying one out from Nikon at Germany Invictus games, I knew exactly what I needed to get good shots.
The following photographs are from a Practice session my the Croysutt Warriors in Croydon and I will be joining them and a host of other teams in Reading on the 18th November for the Intermediate-level playoffs. This is a whole day event. So watch this space for photographs from the event.
However here they are practicing Goalball. I will be sorting out a few sequence shots to show you how they throw the ball and defend the goals (usually nets are used in Games, but in practice, they don’t use them).
If you wish to get in contact with them please go to their website here https://croysuttwarriors.org/
