Rob Richardson: London’s legacy

Despite post-Paralympic blues, Rob Richardson talks about how the Great Britain sitting volleyball team is already looking ahead to Rio 2016. 17 Oct 2012

Great Britain's Rob Richardson returns a shot against Morocco during a preliminary round sitting volleyball match against Morocco on Day 4 of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

ⒸGetty Images

Our national league has been a huge part of the development of sitting volleyball in Great Britain and the formation of our team that competed in London, and so we are itching to get back playing again.

A few weeks have gone by now since the end of London 2012, yet I still hear fellow athletes (and those amazing Gamesmakers) talking about Paralympic blues, the London hangover or, as coined by Katie Holloway of USA Sitting Volleyball team, Post London Depression (PLD).

Whatever you call it, it's real and the only way to get over it is to get back training again, I've decided.

So after a much needed break, I was back on court last week for the first time ahead of our national league starting up again this coming weekend.

Our national league has been a huge part of the development of sitting volleyball in Great Britain and the formation of our team that competed in London, and so we are itching to get back playing again.

That London 2012 buzzword of “legacy” is obviously bearing fruit too as we have new clubs entered into the league and there is a real road-show feel about the first competition, with fans able to have a go at the sport, get autographs of the players and test their spike power on the specially set up speed gun.

It's great to see the level of interest in our sport continuing on past London, and I know the guys at Volleyball England have been working hard preparing for this key time after the Games.

For us as players, we are all re-focusing on what we need to do to make sure we are there for Rio in 2016.

This means qualification this time out and building on the platform we set for ourselves when we took on the world's best at London 2012.

Our squad, which is brilliant too, must stay together. In London, we had some outstanding performers like John Munro (voted best blocker) and Netra Rana (second-best libero) and not forgetting myself as the second-best server in the competition too!

So the European Championships in Poland next year will be a key marker of our continued progress before the World Championships in 2014 which will be the first of our qualification tournaments.

It's going to be really hard as there are a lot of good teams out there – especially in Europe – but I know we all firmly believe that we can make up ground on those teams above us.

I've been doing a fair bit of public speaking in the last few weeks, too, which shows how even the general public aren't quite ready to let go of the amazing summer that we have had.

It's something that I find fairly easy doing. It’s a bit like giving a speech at a wedding in that everyone is there to listen to you and enjoy it, and I've had some great feedback since, in addition to some job offers and even a suggestion to become a stand-up comic.

In hindsight I must have overdone it on the jokes on that occasion!

So that's about it for my first blog for Paralympic.org. I'll be updating everyone monthly and the my progress and what is going on in London after the dreaded PLD subsides!