Saints Wheelchair Rugby seek European glory

The Northampton side were unstoppable during the summer, winning the GB WR5s Premiership and Midlands Development League competitions.

Their finish in the former guaranteed them a spot in this weekend’s Poland Cup, which is being held in Gliwice, to lock horns with the best teams from the Polish WR5s league and Saints’ old rivals, Leicester Tigers.

This European tournament – the first international club WR5s competition – represents an important milestone for the development of the format.

And Higgins is desperate to see Saints Wheelchair Rugby make their mark.

“The team is really excited about the opportunity, and so am I for that matter, to go and play WR5s over in Europe,” he said.

“This is still a relatively new format of the sport; it started here in Great Britain back in 2018, it’s now being picked up in other countries around the world – Poland being one of them – and this is the first multi-country event that’s been hosted so we’re ecstatic to be involved.

“We don’t know too much about the teams over in Poland, the winner and the runner-up from their Cup competition, but obviously the runner-up from our WR5s league was Leicester Tigers and we’ve come up against them many times before.

“We’re confident that if we keep that winning mentality we had during the summer, we can carry over our form to hopefully record some victories in Poland as well.

“We started Wheelchair Rugby at Saints a few years ago as a community programme, so to be this competitive already and to be getting these opportunities to be one of the first teams to play on the European stage is fantastic.

“This will be a momentous event in the history of WR5s, so we can’t wait to show what we can do.”