Its been quite a busy few weeks for our Disability Liaison Officers Jo and Jeff Newall.
Earlier this week they attended the Level Playing Field South Forum at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
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MKDSA’s Disability Officers, Jo & Jeff (aka Burt & Ernie) were amongst 100 disabled fans and Disabled Liaison Officers from Sports Clubs all across the South of England & Wales who attended a Level Playing Field Forum at Tottenham Hotspur Football Stadium on 13 November.
Despite it being a very long day for them, they had a brilliant time participating and networking.
“The first exercise looked at what could be done to improve communication between Clubs and fans as a means of attracting more disabled people to live sporting events.
We then had a discussion about the needs of visually impaired fans following a presentation from the RNIB on Seeing Sport Differently. As you might guess we were able to share a lot of Jeff’s experiences.
This was followed by a Q&A with a panel that included Spurs Legend Gary Mabbutt who spoke about his own experience of rejecting medical views that he could not be a professional sports person as he had Type 1 diabetes.
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The final session was a discussion on the related topics of Disability Abuse and Disability Language Awareness.
At the end of the Forum we were then given a tour of the 62,000 seater new Spurs Stadium, including their sensory room, which cost £26k to set up.
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Our verdict was it was interesting to see the Stadium and we would love to go to a game there (inspired to get tickets for a Women’s Super League game) but for us it felt just too big to be our home ground.
So, it looks like MK Dons are stuck with us for a bit longer!”