The first time I heard the whole court

I am twenty-nine and I have been blind since I was seven, a tumour on the optic nerve. I came to goalball late, at a taster day in Sheffield in 2019, and I went home that evening with a bruise across my hip and a club membership.

For two seasons we borrowed a match ball off the team in Nottingham. That sounds like a small thing to work around. What it means in practice is that every drill needing a proper ball happens on the one Sunday a month you have got one, and the rest of the month is footwork and shouting.

We bought our own in March. Blue rubber, IBSA, 1250 grams, bells inside, eight holes cut through so the sound gets out. It arrived heavier than the box suggested and my first honest thought was that we had just spent a hundred euros on a ball.

Then we played with it. The weight is the whole point. It comes at you with intent and you learn quickly to take it on your forearms and the flat of your hip rather than your ribs. The sound stays even the whole way through the roll, so you hear the line it is taking and not only where it left from. Lying long across the line in defence, that is the half second you either get or you do not.

Our blocks are tidier. Our throws are flatter, because we finally train with the ball we compete with. Ben and Aisha from our juniors played their first tournament in Cardiff in June and finished eighth of ten, which for a first outing I will take.

Buy the proper ball sooner than we did.