Movers and Shakers: Walking Football

Ten days ago, I experienced a moment of great joy in my local park. A football suddenly arrived in my general vicinity. I controlled it with my left foot, lifted that foot back and struck it goalwards. To my surprise and delight, it ended up in the net. After a year of playing walking football with quite heroic levels of incompetence, I had finally scored my first goal.

Sadly, that landmark event happened some time after we had recorded this week’s episode of the Movers and Shakers podcast which is all about an activity which has rapidly become the most popular form of exercise for thousands of people like me . But we have plenty of other examples of the joy that so many people with Parkinson’s get from playing walking football.

Walking footballers Annie Booth and Gemma Darville (l) and Jeremy Mundy (r) with the Movers and. Shakers

We are joined in the pub by two women whose lives have, in different ways, been transformed by this slower form of the beautiful game. Annie Booth was diagnosed with Parkinson’s eleven years ago at the age of 47. In 2023, having realised she only came across men at walking football sessions, she formed the Parkinson’s Pioneers, the first walking football club for women: “I was convinced there must be more women out there who wanted to be part of something bigger than the game itself, I guess, and I wanted to create an environment where we felt supported, women felt connected, and they also wanted to learn a new skill.”

Gemma Darville is the coach for the Pioneers, and has always been passionate about football. She probably gets that from her father, but he withdrew from any involvement in the game after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. “My dad, when he was first diagnosed, he wouldn’t leave the house. He didn’t want people to see his tremor. He felt embarrassed, he isolated himself. I came across the football club, and I dragged him there. Basically, I said, “Come on, Dad, you’re a footballer, let’s go, give it a go, I’ll come with you.””

But as well as finding a walking football club for her dad, Gemma has worked with Annie to develop the Pioneers into something of a national community for women with Parkinson’s who want to play football. Once a month, they come from all over the country to Solihull near Birmingham. They spend a couple of hours training and then there’s the opportunity to socialise and share their experiences with Parkinson’s.

The Pioneers enter every Parkinson’s walking football competition, mostly playing against men. Three years ago they were losing 5 or 6 nil to male opponents, this year they managed a 0-0 draw against the overall winners of a tournament. The aspiration longer-term is to have walking football hubs across the country so that people don’t have to travel so far.

Our other guest in the pub plays his walking football at the Emirates Stadium. Three years ago Jeremy Mundy, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2015, had a revelation:”One thing that I noticed as the symptoms progressed was that even if I wasn’t walking very well, if I had a football, I suddenly became alive and danced around the kitchen with a little ball.” His Parkinson’s nurse told him about a demonstration of walking football at the indoor sports centre at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.

He went along, somehow ended up playing and then got involved in helping to set up a regular session of walking football for people with Parkinson’s . Three years on, more than 90 people have taken part, with an average of 30 coming along each week. It’s open to men and women, and those of you who’ve listened to our Parky Profile episode with the writer Linda Grant will have heard her reading a passage from her forthcoming novel which describes the Arsenal walking football sessions.

Jeremy says at. first when he encouraged people to come along some were uncertain: “Almost without exception, at the end of the session, I would ask them how it went, and they said it was so much fun.”

That has certainly been my experience. While I was introduced to my group by Bernie, a friend from my local Parkinson’s get together, the walking football sessions in Ealing’s Lammas Park are open to everyone. When I arrived to find men in their 60s and 70s rifling in shots from 25 yards or in one case making diving fingertip saves, I was at first intimidated.

Then I realised that, while nobody was quite as hopeless at football as me, this was a mixed ability group where everyone was accepted and encouraged. “Good effort, Rory,” they woulld shout as I sliced a shot nearer to the corner flag than the goal.

So what is it about walking football that makes it so attractive? here’s my friend Bernie’s explanation: “Once I’m on the pitch - and most Parkinson’s sufferers will tell you this: - all your inhibitions disappear for that half an hour, 40 minutes, you’re on the pitch, you move quicker, and even when you haven’t got the ball, it’s very fulfilling.”

My theory is that the rules help it meet that sweet spot where you are getting some vigorous exercise while keeping your brain ticking over. Not only do you have to walk, not run, but you’re allowed only three touches of the ball, the third being attempting a pass to a team mate or having a shot at goal. And once you’ve got the ball under control, no tackling is allowed, so you have time to stand and think about what happens next, making it a more sophisticated game than the kick-and-rush affairs I remember at school.

What is also vital about it is that it’s a very sociable affair. Missing a session at the gym or being unable to go for a run feel like minor inconveniences but if I can’t make it to walking football on either a Tuesday or a Thursday, I feel deprived of something that is important to both my physical and mental well-being. Even if it takes another year for me to score again….