Diabetes does not stop people having active lives

SET TO take place early in July is the DiaEURO 2025 Championship, a futsal tournament played by diabetics across the continent. Ireland is one of the many countries who will be travelling to Varna, Bulgaria in the second week of July to take part.

Futsal is a variant of football played on a hard court indoors. It can be considered a version of five a side football played with a smaller, harder ball with a high intensity and unlimited substitutes.

The idea of the championship is to demonstrate that having diabetes does not stop people from having an active life which includes playing high intensity sport.

This will be the third European Championship that the squad will be a part of. The Echo heard from Irish national and Rathfarnham native Adam Kavanagh who spoke about how his diabetes diagnosis affected his life and football.

“Football’s been one of the key parts of my life growing up. It’s all I wanted to do. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2018 when I was 21.

‘Obviously I had lost a considerable amount of weight, you don’t have the energy for physical activity. It takes a huge toll on you. Overnight you have to readjust a few things.”

“Being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2018 was very tough and I found it extremely difficult to come to terms with the diagnosis and the impact on my daily lifestyle but now it has offered me this fantastic opportunity to represent my country and I am really looking forward to it”.

While many would think that being diagnosed with something like diabetes would cause someone to drop down a level in sport Adam showed that this is not always the case.

“I would actually argue the opposite. It meant that I had to be more accountable in my diet and exercise routines. When I first joined back I joined my local team and basically wasn’t getting a lot of gametime and thought I could play at a little bit of a higher level.

‘I reached out to one of the main coaches in UCD and they took me in so I actually went a league higher. I was quite determined.”

The team does not receive any assistance from governing bodies and all funding is contributed and raised via members and fans of the team itself.

Adam touched on some of the reasons why diabetes futsal is not getting the same recognition as other disability teams representing Ireland.

“Essentially we’re not affiliated with the FAI in an official capacity.

‘We don’t receive any funding from them and everything is from the help of sponsors and people who contribute to our crowdfunding. The FAI did have more emphasis on futsal 10-15 years ago.

“They discontinued the main futsal team back in 2012 and haven’t picked it up to any great level since.

‘There’s great work being done by the Irish deaf and amputee teams and they obviously get recognised under the FAIs football for all initiative.

‘We haven’t made it to that list yet but are hopeful to have a dialogue with the FAI in years to come and try to be recognised.”

FAI recognition would have massive benefits with the most important even going beyond funding for the team.

“People would have one recognised official channel to find us which is the main thing we want. The player pool is quite limited.

“One of the main challenges we are having with people is that they don’t know what futsal is. But as soon as you mention the likes of Ronaldinho or Neymar would have crafted their skills on a futsal court then you have people interested.”

The group stages are being drawn this upcoming weekend but Adam is confident that Ireland have what it takes to get out of whatever group they find themselves in.

“We’ve built the squad from 2023. It’s about a 50/50 split of new players and returning. We are pretty certain we’ll make it out of the group stage.

“Our coach, Roberley, is working with us on two to three basic set ups, should we pull them off properly, that will put the weaker teams away fairly easily and have a good battle against the stronger set teams.

‘For example we lost to Portugal in the last championships 5-4. Portugal would be seen as one of the stronger teams.

‘We adopted a route one approach to them and they couldn’t handle that. We reckon if we make it out of the group stages then just see how far we can get.”