With 112 International caps to his name, Darren Harris is a highly experienced sportsman. We discussed what sport has given him and what he’s now giving back.
I’ve seen you describe football as an inclusive sport. Can you expand a little bit more on that?
You didn’t need a lot of equipment. We used to play football with rolled up paper and Sellotape and kick it around the classroom or whatever, so I think from that perspective it’s very inclusive.
Certainly from the disability angle it has been a real challenge for us to get people involved but I don’t think that’s because of the game itself.
You represented ParalympicsGB in Beijing as a judoka (at judo). How did you come to switch sports?
We were involved with British Blind Sport and then the FA got involved with us in 2000. We started playing as England rather than as Great Britain. We went to the European Championships in 2003 which was in Manchester and by getting to the final we qualified for the Paralympics in Athens but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to compete because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland wouldn’t sanction a GB team.
At that point I was 31 and probably thought I didn’t have many more opportunities to make it to the Paralympics. Obviously, I didn’t know that the decision was going to be changed by the time Beijing came around. I decided to give up my job as a computer programmer and went into judo full time. I just wanted to make sure that I got the chance to make it to a Paralympics.
So what did you take from judo that you could apply to football?
I was a pretty fit lad before, but it was a real step up for me in terms of the physical side and that mental application so when I came back to football, I had a whole new mindset about what it meant to be an athlete.
What has kept you in the game for so long? You’ve got over 100 International caps.
I’ve got 112. I’m second to Clarkey (Dave Clarke, another blind footballer). Had I not gone to judo I’d have been on the same as Dave because we started at the same time.
I think I was very selfish and I fell out with a few of the players because I think that I was just that little bit more hungry for success. We all have to make choices in life and they’re not easy choices. I think that I probably made choices that others weren’t prepared to make and I’ve lost things along the way.
I get the impression that you enjoy giving back to sport particularly through meeting and mentoring young people.
Yes, I think that’s kind of come late in my career, as I’ve got older but as a way of saying thanks to all the people that have supported me on my journey – teachers, coaches who have always invested a lot of time in making me as good as I have been.
Do you feel a responsibility to show what disabled people can do by using sport?
I remember the Channel 4 Paralympic trailer; we were called ‘Superhumans’ and there didn’t seem to be any kind of dialogue in that middle ground. We’re either subhuman or superhuman.
Have you retired completely from football? Are you still playing for West Brom (visually impaired football team)?
I’m still playing in the league and I won the golden boot again this season so I’m still playing well and I think in terms of the whole thing with Rio, it was the whole travelling aspect of it again. I know in my heart of hearts that I’m still good enough to play at that level but it’s an awful lot of commitment and I don’t want to do it anymore. But we have got some really good young players at West Brom and they’ve just taken me on now as assistant coach so I’m doing some work with those guys. If one of them makes it to Rio, that’ll feel like I’m there. That’ll be good enough for me.
