Marcus Wells urges fellow colour blind footballers to embrace the game at all levels

Thursday 6 September 2018 is Colour Blindness Awareness Day. As we work to make football inclusive for everyone, hear from 11-year-old Marcus Wells from Northumberland who explains how the condition affects his involvement in the game and how his grassroots club, Stocksfield FC, are making it more accessible.

Thursday 06 Sep 2018
11-year-old Marcus explains why his club Stocksfield FC are helping him to enjoy football more and more

 

Before we knew I was colour blind, I didn't know that much about the condition, so when I was playing football and they put cones out, I thought everyone was seeing things like me.

The colours I can see best are blue, yellow, black and white, so the really strong colours.

Colour Blindness
  • Affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women
  • 2.7m colour blind people in UK
  • Visit: http://www.colourblindawareness.org

But colours like red and orange are hard for me to tell from the grass so colour blindness affects my football in many ways. In watching, playing and even in gaming, they're very difficult for me to tell apart.

I remember once when I was running up to take a penalty and there was a red ball in front of me and I completely missed it because I couldn't see it. I felt really annoyed and embarrassed.

In training, it's really important to have the right colour cones for me. Yellow and blue are perfect but if there's red cones, it's really hard for me to see and it makes me feel worse than I am.

Marcus (front row, second from left) with his team-mates at Stocksfield FC

 

So simple things like putting the cones and bibs out that are the right colours make my football experience much better.

The ideal football for a game for me to play in, would be a white or yellow ball like the Premier League have at the moment, but when they play with a red one it's really difficult.

It’s really good that these changes are starting to be made and I think more colour blind people will get into football more because of these changes.

At the moment, some colour blind people won't like football because it's hard for them to tell it apart, but when the changes are made they will like it.

Marcus believes there will be some professional players who suffer from colour blindness

 

If people don't know about it or care about it, people who are colour blind will just feel left out and like they should give up and we might start losing footballers rather than gaining them.

With these changes, it'll affect one in 12 boys, so 320m people worldwide to be precise.

But I would like to say, that if you are colour blind, don't be scared to play football or worry about it and don't be scared to ask for help.

Find out more details on the condition and what Colour Blindness Awareness Day is all about.

By Marcus Wells