Football players with Parkinson's are 'empowering'

Around 20 players take part in games at Portishead Town FC

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."

Nigel Osmond said managing the team was the best thing he had done in 20 years of volunteering

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.

Parkinson's UK's area development manager, Heidi Taylor-Feld, said players could move better on the pitch because they were not thinking about what they were doing.

"You're tapping into something that's more automatic," she said.

"[There's also] something about having that ball that kind of just encourages that movement," Ms Taylor-Feld added.

She explained staying active was important for people with Parkinson's.

"It can help someone to manage their physical symptoms, but it also gets them out, gets them meeting other people, it's good for their mental health."

Heidi Taylor-Feld said staying active was important for people with Parkinson's

Camaraderie, Ms Taylor-Feld believed, was "crucial".

"People with Parkinson's often feel isolated or they feel like they're the only ones," she added.

Andrew Youngs was diagnosed with Parkinson's five years ago.

He now plays on the wing and got his first pair of football boots in January as an 80th birthday gift.

"It's good to go into the clubhouse afterwards for a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and discuss how that one went just so close," he said.

A Parkinson's UK tournament is being planned for next year.