Football is living in historic times amid its assault on the global stage. The possibilities are endless, and all formats of America’s Game want in.

The NFL continues to expand its international portfolio of regular-season host cities, while Flag Football is gearing up for its Olympic debut at Los Angeles 2028. Elsewhere, wheelchair American football is launching its own pursuit of a spot on the Paralympic horizon.

It was shortly before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world that long-time Raiders fan Geraint Griffiths inadvertently found himself watching a game of wheelchair basketball while sitting in an ice rink cafe. Such were the transferable skills, such was the void of a footballing equivalent, off went the light bulb; Griffiths, general manager of UK club Chester Romans, would set out to plot a wheelchair football empire beginning at grassroots level and with soaring ambitions of trotting the globe.

With the pandemic came a window in which to craft and tinker with an official rule book. And by February 2024 the evolution of British wheelchair football was being showcased during Nickelodeon’s Slimetime Super Bowl special.

As Flag Football continues to thrive as one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, Griffiths – the BAFA Commissioner for Disability & Wheelchair American Football – has plans to follow suit.

“Once flag hits the Olympics, I can take a completed project and a working project and say ‘here’s a para version of flag’,” he told Sky Sports.

“Every sport they have in the Olympics, they have the para version. For us, for the UK as well, to be able to turn around and say, ‘here’s a working model of a game’, it means the UK are going to be the world leaders in a sport that’s not our sport.

“That will be a huge honour and a legacy I’ll leave behind, and I’ve got a great team of volunteers that work with me.”

The Nickelodeon episode played out on television four times across Super Bowl weekend in 2024, since which BAFA has signed off on the UK’s official rules, and since which Griffiths has pitched the development of Wheelchair American Football in front of all 74 member nations of the International Federation of American Football at the annual congress in Switzerland, and since which Wheelchair American Football has been invited to put together a proposal to perform a showcase at the Birmingham 2027 Invictus Games. He isn’t hanging around, nor is the sport.

“It’s something people want,” said Griffiths. “And I think also it’s something the disability community needs. There’s not enough opportunities for a disabled person to be able to take part in sports.

“Currently, there’s only one in four people who have a disability that actually do take part in sports. You have three out of four people who want to take part but don’t have those opportunities.

“It’s also a sport that no one would have ever said, ‘I’m in a wheelchair or I have a disability, I’m an amputee and I’m going to play American football’, the two have never really gone together.”

Griffiths explains that there are currently two teams in training and four more in the process of forming in addition to the Road to Birmingham Club in view of the Invictus Games proposed showcase, the idea of which is to then hopefully secure Wheelchair Football’s spot as a core sport at the 2029 Games.

“What we want to have is three teams Midlands upwards and three teams Midlands downwards,” he explained. “Ideally this year they’ll have had a couple of weekend tournaments, and then we can play the first UK Wheelchair Football Super Bowl, which would be the best of the north against the best of the south.”

“Internationally, Austria have been in touch, they’re really keen to start promoting and playing. I’ve spoken to Australia, Ghana, Uganda, Italy, Holland, Canada, so there’s a lot of interest worldwide wanting to do this.”

Griffiths cites the story of a former London Monarchs player who found a path back to sport through wheelchair football having lost his legs while fighting at war.

“I never got to say goodbye, now I don’t have to,” Griffiths recalls him saying.

He, too, notes Dave Thompson MBE, chief executive of Warrington Disability Partnership, whose discovery of wheelchair football inspired a return to the sport having been paralysed while playing in the ’80s.

“He came to the first I did at Warrington about four years ago, it was the first time he’d picked a football back up and started having to go chucking it in the net,” says Griffiths.

“His son was stood next to me and was just absolutely overwhelmed. He told me his dad had not picked up a football in nearly 20 years, it was absolutely amazing.”

Sure, the platform and the amplification that beckons with an Invictus Games or Paralympics appearance looms as a spring-boarding milestone. But Griffiths is also seeking to ensure increased accessibility and participation from the bottom up remains the staple goal.

For him, the beauty comes in the ability to reach every demographic and background.

“Another one of my fondest memories is my very first event in Kent, a group of palliative care nurses came up to me and said they really liked the nets we were using to throw balls into during a practice activity.

“They said they had lots of gentlemen at the home coming to the end of their life who might have played sports in the past, and thought something like this would bring back some nice positive memories.

“I told them they could throw anything into the net, whether it’s a soccer ball, a tennis ball or a football, and at the end of the event they bought two nets online to start using them in the home.

“It really touched me. And I think that is one of the things I’ll never forget, is how American football has an effect on anybody. And it will have had such a positive effect on so many people that end up in this nursing home. That was really powerful.”

MOVE United oversee the USA Wheelchair Football League, the existence of which is in part thanks to an NFL-Bob Woodruff Foundation Salute to Service partnership grant. The league consists of 14 national NFL-linked teams, which play on a rectangular field measuring 228 feet long and 66 feet wide.

Griffiths meanwhile elected to shrink the field of play to a basketball-size set-up in his BAFA-approved rules, for both safety and in order to create a more technical game less reliant on big throws and fast wheelchair users. The smaller size field also makes the sport accessible worldwide courtesy of every country’s access to a basketball size court, as well as bringing sustainability to the game.

BAFA have provided a portion of their Sport England grant in aid of the game’s continued evolution, while universities and the Police Force PUKDS are willingly offering free service to their sports centres.

“Financially it’s difficult to grow, the more people who see it the more opportunities will make themselves available,” Griffiths continued.

“I’d like to see something like the Jags become sort of Team UK, they are one of the teams without a wheelchair team in America.

“I think once they have a competitive league going on, to be able to show them and maybe have them back or be the first NFL team to back a UK version of the sport, would be amazing.”

Within Griffiths’ refined model, fumbles have been removed due to the safety issues with fingers reaching for loose balls, while kicks are thrown and teams are made up of seven players per side, including only one able-bodied player on court at one time.

A removal of helmets had been under consideration in light of spinal and neck problems, but feedback would point towards retaining them in order to preserve the feeling that players were competing in real football. Such is the case, the weight of helmets is now explored in order to cater to those that do suffer with spinal or neck issues, among others.

Wheelchairs meanwhile remain the toughest and most pressing expense, with some manufacturers having underlined their interest in providing support further down the line. In the meantime, the sport relies on standard basketball chairs as a cost-effective solution in a bid to maintain the game’s forward progress.

Griffiths has sketched a blue-print and engineered its commencement to leave wheelchair football flirting on the brink of global recognition, a potential Invictus Games showcase beckoning as a major stepping stone towards the next lofty goal in the project.

“Flag’s just going to… well, it has exploded,” says Griffiths. “And just being able to go to the Olympic Committee with a finished product, that has been played internationally as well and not just in a couple of countries, even if I could just get a showcase at the Paralympics or something.

“It would be 2032 in Brisbane. I think that’s what I’m aiming for now, is to be able to do a showcase at the ’32 Paralympics. Then I can sit back and watch it grow nicely.”

Football is changing. The world is listening, and battling over rights for its attention. And with Griffiths at the helm, the sport’s wheelchair discipline is on the path to prominence.

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