Portable goals help club prepare for Australian Goalball Championships

South Australia’s goalball players are preparing to host the 2019 Australian Goalball Championships next month, with help from portable, inflatable goals from Packaworld.

The championships are being held in Adelaide from 3-6 October, and Goalball South Australia’s players are busy practising with their new Goalball Packagoals, which they received last month.

The state’s governing body for goalball, Goalball South Australia was established in 2012 in response to significant development of the sport through the work of the Australian Paralympic Committee and Blind Sports South Australia.

Goalball South Australia’s President David Tiller said the ease of transport, time required to set up and storability of the Packaworld goals is much better than steel or aluminium goals.

They were also an important part of growing the game in South Australia, he said.

The portability of the goals makes it easy for Goalball South Australia to take them along to events and spread the word about goalball.

“We are able to load them into a car to take them to open days and other events. We use events like that to publicise the sport, introduce the sport to vision impaired children and adults, while also hopefully picking up some new players for our club.”

Mr Tiller’s 15-year-old daughter, Alana, plays for the club and will be competing in the Australia Goalball Championships, having just represented Australia in the IBSA Goalball Youth World Championships, where the Australian Youth Girls’ team came away with silver medals.

She is just one of a diverse group of Goalball South Australia players, ranging in age from 10 to their mid-thirties. Players get together once a week to practise, where junior players participate alongside senior players, as a form of mentoring.

Packaworld chief executive Peter Roberts said South Australia was the first of Australia’s state goalball clubs to purchase the goals and he was looking forward to seeing the impact they had on participation.

“In the past, it’s been difficult to bring the game to prospective new players due to the difficulty in storing and transporting goals of the size required for goalball. We’re thrilled to have smashed that barrier to more people experiencing the joy of sport through our high-quality portable goalball goals.”

Packaworld’s Goalball Packagoals were developed in consultation with Blind Sport New Zealand. They are increasingly used by organisations around the world to run local competitions and introductory goalball sessions designed to grow participation in the Paralympic sport.

What is goalball?

Goalball was developed with blind and visually impaired athletes in mind. It is a Paralympic sport in which teams of three players roll a ball with bells inside it across an indoor court and into a nine-metre-wide goal at the other end. Players on the other team try to block the ball from entering their net by diving. Anyone can play, both blind and sighted wearing eye shades, relying on sound to identify where the ball is.

For more information about our goalball goals visit the Goalball Packagoals page of our website>>