I’ve been training so hard recently that I feel like a prize greyhound!  I’m currently training six days out of seven. I work for BT in the daytime in their technical support division and, as a company, they’ve been incredibly supportive of my efforts with the England and GB cerebral palsy football teams.

When I first started at BT I didn’t think to mention my football but once they found out they really wanted to support me. To be added to their BT Ambassador programme was a real honour.

The England seven-a-side football team only gets to meet up about once a month so the coaches have stressed the importance of the individual training. They have started to put in place a strict training regime and have given us all heart monitors so that we can maximise the effectiveness of the exercise that we do. 

Every Sunday we have to report back to our strength and conditioning coach online. He takes our results, assesses them and then monitors our progress. At the moment, we might not be the most technical team but our coaches decided that we should try and strive to be one of the fittest. I think I can speak for the whole team when I say that we’re all feeling the benefits.

As I’ve always had cerebral palsy, it’s not something I really think about in terms of how I manage it through my training. I’m having to make sacrifices to fit the training into daily life but it’s definitely worth it. I tend to train before and after work, I also play or train with a local team two or three times a week. With work in the daytime and training before and after, I soon realised that I need at least seven hours sleep every night so I barely drink and have curbed my social life in order to really commit to the team.

As a team, whilst we need to focus on more immediate challenges, we’ve all got an eye on London 2012. I was lucky enough to compete at the Paralympics in Beijing 2008 for Team GB and that was an incredible experience. Many people have said it, but when you’re at an Olympic or Paralympic Games, you feel like you’re in a bubble and it’s only when you come out that you realise what an amazing and surreal experience it is. I totally underestimated the size of the event and it was an absolute privilege to be there.



In terms of progress since Beijing, I think the team has dramatically improved. We’re fitter and we’re also stronger - some of the lads that were younger have grown up a bit now and so physically we’re more of a threat to the opposition. We have also begun to work better as a team on the pitch; we keep our shape better during games and when we break and attack we’re much more dangerous. However, there are always areas that we can develop. One of the main areas to work on is communication but I’m sure that, as the squad spend more time together, this will naturally improve.

A real test for us will be this year’s BT Paralympic World Cup. It’s fantastic that seven-a-side football has been added to the event and I’m really excited to be part of the GB team. It’s even more exciting that it’s an event that BT is the title sponsor of and, as a BT Ambassador, it’s great that I’ll be competing there.

Of the teams that we’ll get to play, Holland and Ireland are ranked above us - we’ve beaten them before in friendly matches but we seem to fall down against them in competitive games so this tournament gives us a fresh opportunity to pit our wits against them.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep training and pushing myself as hard as I can. Our coach has a saying that he has instilled in us as a team – "dream it, believe it, achieve it".  So far, we’re two thirds of the way there and I really hope that, with all our extra effort, we can achieve as a team at the highest level.

Richard Fox has been a member of Britian's Paralympic football team for four years and scored one of the goals that helped them qualify for the 2008 Beijing Games. He now is part of a technical support helpdesk working in BT Global Services and is a BT ambassador. BT is the official communications services partner for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and title sponsor of the BT Paralympic World Cup.  For more information click here.