MURDERball (thesequel)

by robert tighe
pictures ANDREW COFFEY

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murderball [the sequel]
There were four friends, three
dogs and two brothers in the work
van when it went off the road,
somewhere outside Christchurch,
sometime around 11pm on Sunday,
February 5, 1995.
Tim Johnson had celebrated his 19th birthday
the day before. After waking with a sore head
he went to help his older brother Andrew and a
mate with a painting job. They had a few beers,
finished the job and then went on a road trip
picking up some more mates and drinking some
more beers along the way.
The boys were on their way home. Tim
was smashed, Andrew was drunk. And he
was speeding. Tim wasn’t wearing a seat belt
because he wasn’t sitting in a seat. He was
perched on a paint can in the back of the van.
There was a T-junction. Andrew didn’t see it until
it was too late. The van failed to take the 90
degree turn and left the road. Tim was the only
one injured. The dogs were fine, his brother was
fine and his mates were fine. Tim had broken his
neck but he didn’t know that as he lay in the
back of the van.
“I was awake the whole time. I yelled at my
mates to drag me out,” says Johnson. “They
say you shouldn’t move people. If I hadn’t got
dragged out who knows? You never know.”
The van was a write off and Johnson was
paralysed. But he never once asked ‘why me?’
“It was my fault, I f****d up. I was the one
who wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” he says. “I had
one day where I felt sorry for myself but then I
thought ‘f**k this’ and moved on. But it hit my
brother hard. He didn’t drive for a while and he
wouldn’t come to watch me play for years.”
“The sport that his brother couldn’t watch him
play was wheelchair rugby. Three months after
his accident Johnson was introduced to the game
at the Burwood Spinal Unit in Christchurch.
After he played his first game he was hooked.
Johnson has played for New Zealand since 1999
and he will be one of the senior players in Grant
Sharman’s Wheel Blacks squad aiming to win
pictures: ANDREW COFFEY
back to back gold medals at the Paralympics
in Beijing. Grant Sharman coached the Wheel
Blacks to their surprise success in Athens four
years ago. Beijing will be his last tournament in
charge of the Wheel Blacks.
murderball [the sequel]
counts himself lucky to have worked with some
incredible individuals on the court.
Of the 2008 Wheel Blacks in Beijing, three
of them played with Sharman in the 1996
Paralympics – Curtis Palmer, Geremy Tinker
and Sholto Taylor. It will be Tim Johnson’s third
Paralympics. Dan Buckingham and Jai White
were part of the winning team in Athens, while
Adam Wakeford and Dave Klinkhamer are the
rookies in the squad.
“They are an outstanding group of young
men,” says Sharman. “I agree with Graham
Henry who talked about better people making
better All Blacks. It is the same with the
Sharman was one of those responsible for Wheel Blacks.”
introducing wheelchair rugby to New Zealand. He
played on the first Wheel Blacks side in 1995, As I watch the Auckland-based players being
the same year Johnson broke his neck. Sharman put through their paces in the rather grim
became captain in 1996 but he retired after the surroundings of the Otara Spinal Unit gym,
Wheel Blacks were beaten by one point in the Sharman tells me who’s who.
semi-finals of the Sydney Paralympics in 2000. “Dan is one of the reasons I wanted to coach
“We should have won it, we did some stupid the team. I saw this guy with bucket loads of
things,” he says. “I was devastated by that loss. potential and I thought ‘I can build a team around
I came back to Auckland and back to training and this guy’. He has huge integrity and because he
I was getting in my car after a really hard session is our dominant player he has respect from the
and I thought ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ I other players.
rang the coach and told him I was retiring. It was “Tim is ruthless in his preparation and his
an emotional time, I felt like a loser.” commitment. When Tim is not talking on court
The Wheel Blacks slumped to
sixth at the world championships
in 2002 and Sharman was so
disgusted with their performance
he applied for the coaching
role. He had no previous
coaching experience.
“I did a phone interview and
told them what I would do and
if they didn’t like it they could
stick the job up their arse. I got
off the phone and thought ‘that
was a waste of time’. But they
obviously didn’t have too many
applicants for the job because
they rang me back and said, ‘the
job is yours’.”
“I was so naïve. At the first trial
I sat there and bluffed my way
through the session. I realised
planning and preparation were
the key and I surrounded myself
with fantastic people.”
As well as surrounding
himself with fantastic people
off the court – Sharman has
recruited some of the best video
analysts, sports psychologists
and physical conditioners to
work with the Wheel Blacks – he
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 we are in trouble. Curtis is a superb athlete and
Adam is a player with a lot of potential. Jai is
hugely committed and he is one of the best low
pointers in the world.”
In wheelchair rugby, players are graded from
0.5 to 3.5 depending on their disability. Those
at the lower end of the scale, the low pointers,
have limited function in their hands and arms
and are generally slower around the court. They
are the tight five or the defensive linemen of
wheelchair rugby.
Their job is to stop and block the opposition
and clear the way for their high pointers to score.
The high pointers get all the glory and are the
equivalent of the back three in able-bodied rugby
or wide receivers in American football.
Wheelchair rugby is played over four quarters
of eight minutes. The object of the game is to
carry the ball (a regulation sized volleyball) across
the opposition goal line. The game was developed
in Canada and the US in the 1970s by Vietnam
veterans and it was originally called Murderball.
It was a demonstration sport at the 1996
Paralympics in Atlanta before it made its official
debut at Sydney in 2000.
The US won the first Paralympics title in
2000 and at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens
the rivalry between Canada and the US was the
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“I did a phone interview and told them what I
would do and if they didn’t like it they could
stick the job up their arse. I got off the phone
and thought ‘that was a waste of time’. But they
obviously didn’t have too many applicants for
the job because they rang me back and said,
‘the job is yours’.”
subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary
called Murderball.
The Wheel Blacks upset the odds and the
filmmakers when they beat Canada in the final
to win the gold. What made the win even more
remarkable was the fact that the Wheel Blacks
went into the Athens Paralympics ranked sixth
in the world.
“I guess we were outsiders,” says the current
Wheel Blacks captain, Dan Buckingham. “I know
people didn’t write us off. They knew we were
going to be a threat but I think they might have
underestimated us a bit.”
Buckingham, like his Wheel Blacks
teammates, Johnson and Geremy Tinker has
played in the American and Canadian leagues
pictures: Milos Bicanski/gettyimages.com
His teammate Johnson has a similar attitude.
“I definitely don’t think I am disabled. I am
just playing a sport I love. I’ve done all the things
I wanted to do in my life. I just can’t walk.”
Dan Buckingham was a university student in
Dunedin when he became a tetraplegic in 1999.
He was the hooker for his club team and he
was playing his first game after recovering from
a knee injury. The last thing he remembers is
packing down for a scrum; after that it is all a
bit of a blur.
and he counts some of the stars of the
Murderball movie as his friends. Murderball has
“From what I’ve been told, the scrum broke
up and I was left on the ground. Apparently I was
been praised as the best movie about living with conscious but I don’t remember it. My spine was
a disability and Buckingham says the opening
lines of Scott Hogsett, an American player,
dislocated, they had to pop it back in place and
I had to get a bone fusion. But as far as spinal
captures the spirit of the players involved in injuries go mine was fairly straightforward. I
wheelchair rugby. wasn’t moved. The ambulance came on the field
“People come up to me and shake my hand and took me away so I actually ended up with really head first. Still, any suggestion that helmets
when I’m out and say ‘it’s good to see you out’,” good function.”
says Hogsett. Like Johnson, Buckingham was introduced to
“Good to see me out! Where am I supposed wheelchair rugby at the Burwood Spinal Unit. He
to be? In the closet, hanging out?” started playing for the Wheel Blacks in 2001 and
“That is the mentality of a lot of rugby went to his first Paralympics in Athens.
players,” says Buckingham. “They are just doing “Looking back I was pretty fresh and a bit
what they enjoy doing and they don’t see it as naïve and I didn’t realise how intense it was going
anything special.” to be. People will do whatever they can to put you
off your game. It can be pretty harsh. There is
a lot of shit talk and it can get rough at times.
There is no holding back. It is your mother, it is
your sister. Anything goes.”
Anything goes from a physical point of view
as well. The players are strapped into their
wheelchairs so if when they are knocked off
balance they hit the wooden floor hard, usually
“People come up to me and shake my hand
when I’m out and say ‘it’s good to see you out’,”
says Hogsett.
“Good to see me out! Where am I supposed to be?
In the closet, hanging out?”
might not be a bad idea gets short shrift “People say you did well and you got second
from Sharman.
“Helmets are for the Special Olympics.
These guys are serious athletes, and not to take
anything away from Special Olympics, but they
are all about participating. These guys would no
more stop and help someone over the finishing
line than … I don’t know what.”
“It is a very physical game. It is dangerous,”
continues Sharman. “We do joke about it and
say how much worse can it get, but the reality is
that it can hurt.”
What hurts Sharman and the Wheel Blacks
more is losing and the 44-30 loss to the US in
the Canada Cup (an annual tournament between
the top eight countries in the world) in June is
the ideal motivation ahead of the Paralympics.
in the world but it was gutting to get that far and
not win. We expect to be the best and we are not
happy with anything else,” says Buckingham.
The result at the Canada Cup means the Wheel
Blacks go into the Paralympics as the second-
ranked team in the world, behind the US, even if
they are seeded fifth for the Paralympics.
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 murderball [the sequel]
Sharman explains that the Paralympics
seedings were decided at the end of last year
and he reckons any one of the top six teams in
the world could win in Beijing. There may be five
or six teams that could win in Beijing but given
their 14-point loss to the US in the Canada Cup
it is likely that if the Wheel Blacks want to defend
the title they won in Athens they will need to beat
the US to do so.
After their 14-point defeat recently Sharman
would love nothing more than to come up against
the Americans again.
“In some ways, the fact they hammered
us by so much is a good thing. They are
dismissing us as chokers,” he says. “I
hope if we make the semi-final or final we
meet the Americans. I have a passion to
beat the US. I don’t want to retire without
beating them.”
Sharman’s captain would also love to have
another crack at the Americans after the
disappointment of the Canada Cup.
“They pretty much tore us apart. We didn’t
have much of an answer,” says Buckingham.
“They came into the final full of the usual
American bravado and bullshit and they threw it
all at us.
“They are a very good team but they are very
poor losers. They are even worse winners. But
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you’ve got to respect them as athletes; they are
really good at what they do.”
It helps that the US had more players at
their Paralympic trial last year than there are
registered players in New Zealand.
Buckingham says 54 players tried out for
the US national team while there are only 48
registered players in NZ.
In order to have another shot at the
“Helmets are for the Special Olympics. These
guys are serious athletes, and not to take
anything away from Special Olympics, but they
are all about participating. These guys would no
more stop and help someone over the finishing
line than … I don’t know what.”
Americans the Wheel Blacks need to get out of
their group at the Paralympics. They play Great
Britain on September 12, followed by Australia
and Germany. If all goes to plan they will meet
Canada in the semi-final and if they win that their
likely opposition in the final would be the US.
Right now Johnson isn’t thinking beyond
the opening game and getting off the experiences, some great times. It has been a
training treadmill.
murderball [the sequel]
“We’ve done the hard work and it is just
a matter of fine-tuning now. For the last few
months it has been work – train – eat – sleep.
Nothing else,” says Johnson. “Since I started
with the Wheel Blacks in 1999 I’ve trained six
days a week for an average of 12 hours a week.
And I’ve only had a couple of months off in that
whole time.”
Buckingham has put in similar hours since
he first started playing with
the Wheel Blacks in 2001. For
Buckingham and Johnson and
the rest of the Wheel Blacks,
they take their sport and their
preparation as seriously as
any other top-class athletes in
the country.
“When I played able-bodied
rugby I was just an average
player and I enjoyed the after-
match function as much as the
game. But wheelchair rugby
is a high performance sport,”
says Buckingham. “Your whole
day revolves around it and it is
all-encompassing.
“It is a lifestyle rather than
just a sport.”
For Sharman it is a lifestyle
that has given him more than he
imagined when he first started
playing the game.
“It has meant a normalisation
of my life. I was 15 when I was
injured playing rugby and I never
got to play 1st XV or club rugby
so I never got to experience the
camaraderie and the whole friendship that goes
with that. Then wheelchair rugby came along and
I loved it.
“As part of the Wheel Blacks we got to
pictures: ANDREW COFFEY
travel the world, we were unique and we were
successful. We were the little team that could.
It has given me so much – great mates, great
real honour to be involved in this game.”