In this blog I am going to talk about some of the experiences I had when I played

football, in relation to being autistic and having two anxiety disorders. The two

anxiety disorders I am referring to are Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and

Social Anxiety Disorder (funnily enough I don’t hear many people refer to it as

SAD).

Although I can’t describe every anxious situation I have found myself in when I

played football, I can give plenty of examples that I hope you will find useful,

whether you are a player, a coach or spectator.

Now to start with I will say what level I played at. I dabbled with semi

professional level briefly when I was 18, but spent most of my playing times at

Sunday League level. This was in the north of England, which most people

believe is tougher than down south, but that’s a discussion for another day!

I started kicking a football pretty much as soon as I could, and I joined my local

junior football club at 8. I stayed with the same club until I was 16 when I had to

join adult level or Under 18s. I actually ended up starting at adult level, then

Under 18s, then adult level again, then Under 18s again, then adult level again!!

Now on to the autism and anxiety side of things!

For pretty much the whole of my junior career I played in the same position –

right back. So where does autism fit in here? Well, for one I was able to stick to a

routine i.e. I knew where I should be, I knew to take the throw-ins, I mainly just

used my right foot (not advisable I know!), I knew when to push up (most of the

time – depended if I had different people shouting at me!) and I could see

everything in front of me (very important this one – I didn’t feel claustrophobic

having people either side of me, I only had the goalkeeper behind me, and

generally I had to kick the ball one way (forward)) Other things that helped with

autism are that usually the kick off was the same time (if we played at home it

was & I knew where to go and at what time), I woke up at the same time, wore

the same kit (half the time), and knew my teammates (most were actual friends

outside of football). It was slightly different when we played away due to the

home team choosing the kick off time (most of the time it was the same time

though), wearing the away kit (although it was the same kit every time we

played away), and travelling to a different venue (this caused anxiety as it was a

different pitch, different people watching & other different anomalies).

I will now explain some anxiety related situations. One that caused me particular

anxiety was when someone kicked the ball in the air and I had to wait for what

seemed like forever for it to start to come back down so I could try to head it. I

often struggled to judge when to start jumping! I also got too anxious waiting/or

even bored at times. It used to cause a pain in my stomach. I got anxiety when

warming up. In fact I got anxiety for most of the time I played – it was always

there and always is there, it’s just that sometimes it is much worse than others!

I hated defending a corner, where we had to wait for someone to cross the ball in.

At various times during my junior career I was the penalty taker. Even though I

was a right back I was pretty good at penalties (I believe I used my attention to

detail as a strength here as I often won penalty shoots out to determine the

penalty taker for the season). However, during matches I was much worse at

penalties and missed a few! This was down to anxiety. Well, how can that be

different to when you won the penalty shoot out you ask? Well it is! I was still

anxious doing the shoot out but.....during an actual game there were more

spectators, it was a bigger pitch, my team depended on me scoring (whereas I

was on my own for the penalty shootouts so was only letting myself down), there

were opposition spectators, and all eyes were on me (whereas with shootouts

everyone was taking a penalty).

I’d get anxiety having spectators next to me on the side-lines, whether my team

or the other (more people to concentrate on and not be able to switch off from),

hated the thought of playing anyone onside, and I’d even get anxiety about my

shoelaces coming undone!!! I couldn’t tie them for the first few years so was

scared to death of them coming undone and not knowing what to do! Thankfully

my Dad (and then me after) tied several knots around them so they couldn’t

come undone – Phew! 

There were also other anxiety or autism related reasons why I played in defence.

I preferred to have to stop people attacking rather than me having to dribble

past people and lose the ball, I wasn’t a skilful player and I didn’t really try to be

as I didn’t want to seem arrogant, and....I actually didn’t want to score any goals

during games! Well kind of...I wanted to score but didn’t want to be

congratulated after scoring as it would mean all the attention was on me! So by

being in defence I was further from the goal! I also found it easier to score longer

range goals than ‘easier’ goals, as there was less pressure to score the ‘easier’

goals! 

The ‘autistic strengths’ I possess did also help me when playing football growing

up. I spotted patterns of play easier so could break up attacks well as I could

predict where the ball was going to be. I was driven and motivated to give 100%

no matter the weather or circumstances. By having routines this helped me to

have consistency. There are more traits, but I will cover those in the future!

I will write more blogs on my experiences of playing football, as there is so much

more to uncover!!!   

Stay tuned for more in the coming months!!

Ben