Football players with Parkinson's are 'empowering'

A football manager says it is "empowering" to watch a team of people with Parkinson's disease playing the game.

Nigel Osmond manages around 20 walking football players at Portishead Town FC who are getting ready for their first fixture on Saturday.

The sport allows some players to do more on the pitch than their symptoms would allow them to do off it, participants say, and also helps them socialise.

"These people are just just getting on with it, just trying to be active, they're not going to give up," Mr Osmond said.

The team play every Friday on an artificial pitch thanks to £700,000 from a Lionesses football fund.

Mr Osmond said: "These people were sort of struggling to get over a step and into a changing room.

"And then once we started to play football there's something that just makes them forget, and they can just move a lot better than they can normally."

Ian Humphreys was diagnosed with Parkinson's a year ago and now plays as a winger, after not playing football for 20 years.

He said he was not "particularly" good but it was nice to to talk to like-minded people with similar problems.

"It's surprising to me, because a lot of people who have great difficulty in walking normally, as soon as they get a football in front of them, they suddenly turn into a professional footballer," he said.

"You can't stay with the Parkinson's problem for all your life and lock yourself away, you've got to make use of what's out there," Mr Humphreys added.

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