Benjamin is a team player
orignally published in The Star, August 6, 2014
Benjamin Hodgkinson knows what it’s like to be part of a team.
He’s 11 years old, 1.65m tall, 80kg, and loves rugby.
He’s also autistic.
But at Prebbleton rugby club, that hasn’t stopped him from playing for their under-13 white team.
He joined the club when he was six, after he was asked to leave his previous team, as some of the parents didn’t want a special needs boy in their team.
His mother, Wendy, said she was gutted when that happened, and reached out to several clubs, looking for a place where her son could play.
That place turned out to be Prebbleton.
“They invited Benjamin down to their club night, and actually asked him if he’d come and play for them.”
Benjamin had a traumatic personal tragedy last year, which forced him to stop playing the game.
Returning to rugby became a focal point of his recovery, and so Wendy approached the club about a possible return.
“It would have been so easy for them to say – we’re playing competition grades now, he’s of no value to the team really, but they didn’t,” she said.
She had the full support of junior club captain Telsa Buckley.
“Our motto is that we want every child to play our national game,” she said.
The Ellesmere rugby sub-union helped by giving Benjamin dispensation from rules that say every player must play at least half of every game, allowing him to play as a rolling substitute.
Once that was sorted, it was a case of finding him a team.
The club had two in the under-13 grade, and both were willing to take him on board.
“As soon as I said Ben wants to come and play, there wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation,” said Buckley.
Wendy manages the team, and said you couldn’t ask for a nicer group of boys.
Benjamin’s autism means that he’s not particularly co-ordinated, and he doesn’t always remember the rules, but his teammates never let that bother them.
“There are boys in our team who are subbed off for Benjamin all the time, and not once have they complained,” said Wendy.
Wendy said they bend over backwards to help her son out, putting him where he needs to be on the field, and showing him what he needs to do.
“They don’t treat him like Ben the special needs kid, they treat him like Ben their teammate,” she said.
In a video produced for funding facilitator Manawanui, Benjamin said that when he plays rugby, he feels like he’s normal.
“It feels like I’m not special needs at all,” he said.
“I figure I’m built for rugby, you know, like I’ve got big legs, huge muscles.”
“My goal is to tackle them hard, and tackle them around the legs.” “I just love rugby.” The support from Prebbleton doesn’t just come on the field either.
“I go down to the clubrooms, and he’s just taken away by all the boys. They don’t make fun of him, they don’t take advantage of him – they treat him like he’s one of them,” said Wendy.
“For a special needs child, that’s all they want. All they want is acceptance.”
Other parents have told her that having Benjamin on their team has done a lot for their own children.
“They’ve been exposed to something they’ve never been exposed to before and it makes them think about how lucky they are.”
“There’s nowhere else I can go where I can know my autistic son is fine to be with in a group of kids,” she said.
“I had to walk away from his game last Saturday because I was in tears because the boys decided they were going to get him over the try line,” said Wendy.
Returning to rugby this year had done a lot for Benjamin, she said.
“The change in him is phenomenal – he’s more confident and more happy.”
“If you had seen him after the traumatic incident, I thought we’d lost him forever.”
Wendy hopes that with the confidence he has gained from playing this year, Benjamin won’t need dispensation to play next season.
“He’s actually feeling good about himself for the first time in a long time.”
She said she doesn’t think the club realises how special they are.
“When you have a special needs child you feel very isolated and it’s very easy to take that isolation and run with it. It’s very hard with any children, let alone children that are different, to put yourself out there. With Prebbleton, they have never made me or my family feel less for having a child that’s different.”
Buckley says the credit has to go to the group of boys in Benjamin’s team.
“In this day and age, when kids can be pretty cruel, they’ve made the club very proud in how they’ve welcomed him.”
