Make A Difference 25 - Active Award finalist - Devon Deaf Rugby

My name's Matthew Pitcher and I'm one of the coaches here at Deaf Devon Rugby. I help with the communication as well. I'm a level three BSL signer, so I help with the deaf players who communicate well with then the hard of hearing players who are learning sign language.
This team is absolutely fantastic for inclusion. There's many, many quality deaf sports players or hard of hearing sports players that don't feel welcomed or they find it hard to join local teams or hearing teams due to that communication breakdown.
So what this club and team does is provide a platform for the deaf people and hard of hearing players to come in, express themselves and feel like you know they're part of something big. Deaf Devon is the first and only county team ever in Britain, which is a massive thing.
So yeah, the first county side ever. So currently in Britain as a deaf team, there's only Wales Deaf, England Deaf and Devon Deaf. So we've seen so many players that haven't played before, deaf players that haven't played before, join this club.
And what that's done for their mental health and their well-being, joining new friendship groups, making new friends, even if it's hard of hearing, have just started to learn to using BSL sign language.
But the fully deaf players feel part of something - I know I spoke to many of them - they spoke about their mental health and how being outside and expressing themselves and just being in that freedom is just so good for their mental health.
We started off with a couple of local friendlies and it really developed quite quickly and the local friendlies were against just like local clubs, but it developed quite quickly when our name got out there that we were a fully deaf team, or qualified deaf team, so now we've gone on to play against Welsh Deaf, who are the world champions, and we've travelled to Wales and we gave them a really good game. They did beat us, but it was a really good game and then we've gone on to play against England Deaf. We did win, but we did give them a couple of our players to support them because they've travelled down here.
But what we do have, we have 40 players registered now that qualified deaf so we could actually put out two sides which is absolutely fantastic from having that first training session I think we had 10 people, and now we've got 40 qualified deaf players that can go out there and play. And to qualify for a deaf team you have to have a hearing loss - you don't have to be fully deaf - we have got many fully deaf BSL users, but we've also got many hard of hearing players and this is something everyone can like think about is if you have a hearing loss, you can qualify for a deaf team. You don't have to be fully deaf and so one of my good friends, he just didn't know anything about it really, and then goes, ‘Oh I've got a bit of a hearing loss in my left ear.’ He went and got a test, yeah, and he qualified. Now he's represented England twice, so just that progress of not really understanding or knowing what’s out there for the deaf, and then all of a sudden he's played for Deaf Devon, he's gone on to represent England, played against Wales, won a cap, that is just incredible.
The growth we've seen already is that we've got a number of our players that represent in England Deaf and that's just in Devon, and that is the male and female team. We've had a number of the female players gone and play for England as well, which is incredible, incredible. What we would like to pursue is have like a county championship in the future so promoting the deaf sports in other counties and hopefully then they will be able to field a county side that's deaf then we can have like a mini county tournament which would be fantastic, so Devon Deaf v Cornwall Deaf and what an amazing step and what an amazing achievement that would be for the deaf community. My partner, my fiancé, is deaf and my daughter's deaf so being involved in this and actually really celebrating the deafness and what they can achieve in sport, is just, it's massive for me and I love it, love it.