Unleashing the Intensity: Inside the Thrilling World of Wheelchair Rugby with Team Australia’s Steelers

Wheelchair Rugby has to be one of the fiercest Paralympic sports going around. Team Australia is represented by the Steelers. And earlier in the year, we had Steelers player Shae Graham on the podcast to explain just how the sport works. Wheelchair Rugby is this super fast paced, highly strategic, mixed gender, um, full contact sport. There’s four players on, um, like four players per team on the court at one time. Of those players, um, your classifications need up to add up to eight points. If you’ve got a female on the court, you get an extra point five for each female. You’ve got 40 seconds to score. Um, in that 40 seconds, you have to have advanced it into your attacking half in 12 seconds. And then you have to either bounce or pass the ball every 10 seconds. So super fast. And then the strategy really comes in when you’re like matching your line up against, um, other teams. It’s 8, 8 minute, um, running, uh, shot stop clock, um, quarters. So the game can go from anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half and we never end on a draw. So the game can continue on into overtime, which can be thrilling and really nerve wracking.