Master of Murderball: Ryley Batt | One Plus One

welcome to one plus one i'm kurt fernley my guest today is a champion of the sport that they call murder ball he's a fierce competitor known for taking no prisoners on the court but i also know he's a huge softie underneath that hard exterior i caught up with riley bat for a conversation but first he wrote me into a workout session [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] how frequently do you do something like this oh at the moment every day i'm loving it mate you know doing doing the same training for two decades in wheelchair rugby it's been awesome but i just want to mix it up and this new world for me of crossfit um it's it's constantly varied mate it's every workout is different and it just challenges you some days you come in and you look at the board and you just there's no way i'm going to get through that other days it looks easy but it's not and i've loved it absolutely loved it how many push-ups are we doing now oh you can do 15 hover ones all right let's go [Music] are you ready 600. [Music] [Music] that's good i'm going to need a couple hours to get ready for this interview have a cold gin how about that riley back welcome to oneplus one cheers for me mate mate the intensity that you bring to sport you bring it to sport and training um but especially when you pull on that green and gold where does that come from oh i mean i'm getting goosebumps just even thinking about it now it's we represent australia you know throwing that green and gold means so much to me i i make sure when i put that jersey on that it's pride it's passion it's it's a thought of you know who supported me on the journey it's you know who's with me it's my community back here in port macquarie it's all those kind of things so i take it very serious when i throw that jersey on that green and gold and i make sure when i've got it on that i leave nothing in the tank you don't leave anything to think you when i see you compete it's terrifying the person that i see there you play wheelchair rugby that is it's one of the most well it is the most violent sport that is in the paralympic movement it's called murder ball um what do you love about that yeah i look i am a little bit too faced when i play wheelchair rugby i will admit that even my wife has said she would not marry on court riley she you know because he is a totally different guy he's he's scary and i'm not a fan of on court riley i apologize to the referees every time i play because i'm in their face and i'm having ghosts at him for their calls and off the court i'm a totally different person i feel really guilty about it and feel really bad so uh yes i'm a bit too faced mate when it comes to wheelchair rugby but i think just what gets me is is that pride it's the competitive nature it's the drive to win i just want to win it you know at all costs and i really enjoy playing for australia i really enjoy playing wheelchair rugby and um you know who doesn't want to see a sport where it's encouraged to knock anyone out you know guys in wheelchairs out of wheelchairs and knock them on the floor i know i love that [Applause] when you describe murder ball like i see it's like four sports rolled into one thrown into a wheelchair and then bash each other up how do you describe it oh look let's let's simplify it mate it's um it's it's dodging cars on a on a on a basketball court it's knock as many blokes as you can out of and females out of our wheelchairs as possible and score more points than the other team what goes through your mind when you do cross that line onto the field of play a lot of nerves a lot of nerves and and that will probably shock a lot of people because i've now played 313 games for australia but i think without nerves you don't care of the result and for me i embrace those nerves and you know use them as as a driving factor to do the best and learn to turn those nerves into that adrenaline uh you know i go through a lot of rituals as well before a game code i am i'm a bit weird i've got a lot of superstitions you know a little bit about my superstitions i've got some lucky underwear what i wear i've got some four leaf clovers in my wallet lucky shoes under my wheelchair that have motivational quotes and i also have to be the last person on the field to play and that's just weird superstitions but it's also routine and that just helps me just helps me every game they're lucky batman jocks don't just throw the lucky dogs out there i i had the same lucky pair of jocks since the first medal that i won in in athens wrote them all the way through so i completely understand it's a superpower yeah but i wash mine kurt what's the difference you wash wash the luck out of it how do they remain lucky yeah it's a bit weird when i say to people i've got lucky underwear and i've had them since i think beijing 2008 and everyone's like that's gross man but they don't realize well for myself i'm not sure about you you probably wear yours every day but for me i've only worn them probably six times in my life so they're probably my freshest pair of undies even though they're the oldest but um yes i've got i am weird like this made but i've got some superhero undies that i wear in different you know pool games semi-final games and the batman undies coming out in the final so uh they've been good to me so far very good the riley that i know is very different to that crazy intense human that's that's wearing the green and gold where did that competitor come from yeah the competitor i i guess i i could thank my mum sorry my dad and my pop for that my dad is a a huge competitor and and always has been he's mid 60s now and he's still ripped as you know very fit and and still love to compete but you know growing up he he did all sports he he actually won an event here in port macquarie called the king of sports what mixed all different sports into one and that's just who he was a competitor and i remember growing up you know playing say classic catchers in the backyard or even jumping into the pool doing it or whatever we did he was still competing against me you know he's he's you know young disabled son who had no chance but i think that's just it made me who i am i wanted to be a competitor and i always wanted to strive for my best and it doesn't matter who i'm up against so i've got to thank him for that but i also got to thank my my pop as well my pop was a huge influence in my life and um you know as one who pushed my boundaries from a young age you know as a three-year-old he bought me my first ever quad bike and my parents sort of looked at him like why are you buying you know a kid with you know no legs missing fingers a motorbike like how's he gonna ride it but you know i managed to do it and it was probably one of the best things that's ever happened in my life getting pushed outside my comfort zone like that has made i guess me a huge competitor in life but yeah i'm very thankful very thankful for my parents and my grandparents what did what did that four by four what did that motorbike bring into your life because you still you still ride it you're still pretty out there on what you're doing it what did that give to a three-year-old kid because disability can get in the right of a lot of stuff it seems that meant something to you i think for me you know growing up with a disability like my younger years i i guess i i didn't really realize my disability but there was something subconsciously that was sitting there that i i just couldn't do what my mates were doing you know they're they're all starting to ride a push bike at three or four years old and and motorbikes you know a lot of my friends were riding motorbikes at three or four years old and i could have just not done that and missed out on that whole part of my life but to to to ride that quad bike as a three-year-old and feel like a normal boy up against all my friends was a huge aspect in my life and i think it showed to my parents my grandparents myself that i am so much more able than um i guess we thought i was going to be you know growing up disability can be complicated it can be complicated not just for you but it can be complicated for your family tell me some stories about how your family adapted to life as you know having it having a kid with a disability so when mum conceived me my um the scan showed that i was a perfectly healthy healthy you know boy when i entered the world as a huge shock for my grandparents and my parents who were there that i was missing legs and missing a few fingers in each hand and i can't imagine how tough that would have been for them and but how they adapted and how they accepted me for who i am and took that challenge on i can't thank them enough they didn't wrap me in cotton wool they let me do anything that any other normal boy did i remember as a probably a four year old i've got vivid memories of it i used to love swimming down at the ocean and i remember dad used to pick me up you know after work put me in his work ut would go down the beach he'd throw me on his back and take me down to the water to swim this day he decided to put me on his back and take me down to go to take me down to the beach but he put me on the soft side at the start of the beach and i remember chucking the world's biggest tantrum as you do as a four-year-old and i just want to get down to the water i want to go for a swim and dad said oh there you go there's the ocean and it was low tide so it was a fair fair way to go but dad persisted to you know shuffle me along while i'm chucking a tantrum to make my own way there meanwhile there's you know families on that beach they were looking at my dad going what are you doing mate pick your poor disabled son up and take him for a swim that's all he wants to do and that must have been really tricky for him to swallow that and to push me to go down to the the beach even with people looking at him as a you know not the best father in the world but you know it was a lesson learnt for me that you know you can achieve anything and you you know you are more able than you you think you are so you know i i got myself down to the water and had a swim and crawled back up and that was the end of the tantrums you know i learned that i can crawl just as far as anyone can walk and it's lessons like that that i'm so thankful for in life you didn't use a wheelchair when you're a young kid why i didn't use a wheelchair mate when i was a kid because to be honest i thought people in wheelchairs were disabled and and i didn't see myself as that what did disabled mean to you as a kid it's yeah i guess as a kid you you can look at people in wheelchairs as a little bit scary and and a little bit different how totally wrong i was as a kid you know i think growing up i just wanted to be who i was and that was riley on a motorbike that was riley on a skateboard and i didn't want to be seen by my peers as someone who's wheelchair-bound growing up i thought that was a bad thing you know looking at someone in a wheelchair now i do not think that at all you know people in wheelchairs are completely normal people and to be honest i think sometimes you know have a stronger willpower than able-bodied people and i to be honest wish i got in a wheelchair at an earlier age i think it would have been so much easier um for me getting around as a kid but i also think it would have been a lot better for me socially than riley who was cutting around school on a skateboard so you got around on the skateboard so for me my my life growing up was um prosthetic legs as a young kid but with my legs being so short i really struggled to to walk on them and my you know my friends at school i remember in kindergarten grade one used to throw their you know the footy out to trip me over as a joke but you know little do they know it was pretty hard to get back up on these these legs that i was trying to learn how to walk on um from there can't imagine seeing you walking around it's like yeah it's um it's something i do want to get back into getting getting some prosthetic legs but um you know the wheelchair's just it's me now and it's part of me and i love it but yeah you know from those prosthetic legs it was just a bit tricky as a kid trying to keep up on the school yard you know running around with your friends i just couldn't do it so i used to crawl around but i just couldn't keep up like that either so the next mode of transport for me was a skateboard you know i used to skate down to the the oval and play soccer and footy and and cricket and you know all those kind of sports with my friends but i just still could not keep up with my friends and then i guess the sport of uh wheelchair rugby fell in my lap how did you get involved in wheelchair rugby it was a school sport grade six there's at a time where i was cruising around school on a skateboard um was putting on weight and i didn't really know what to do with my life i tried to play sport i wanted to play sport but i just could never find a sport that suited me my grandparents said to me my pop especially said when i was about probably nine years old he said you're going to be a paralympian one day you just need to find what sport you're going to be a paralympian in and i sort of just laughed it off because i'm like i'm not you know i'm not gonna do that you know i'm not gonna jump in a wheelchair or whatnot my parents tried to get me in a wheelchair around the same same time and i said to them you can buy me a wheelchair but there's no chance i'm gonna use it i want to be on a skateboard that's me and then grade six at school i didn't get my sport electives in on time i was away for the day so i got stuck with the last choice and that was at the local pcyc and that was three sports involved there was table tennis squash and wheelchair rugby what's this wheelchair rugby you know i've never heard of it in my life went to the pcyc went to the wheelchair rugby and saw a local paralympian at the time tom kennedy who just came off the back of winning a silver at the sydney 2000 paralympics he had about 14 wheelchair rugby chairs there and all these kids ran to these rugby chairs and started playing but i sat back i could see him looking at me i sat back and i was like i'm not jumping one of those that's defeat you know i'm not jumping in a wheelchair that's embarrassing so the week went on i watched all my able-bodied friends you know jump in these wheelchairs bash into each other have the best time a week went on and we went on a family holiday to harrington so what i usually do is get on my skateboard at the time i had a one with monster truck wheels so you could go over the gravel and remember pushing along the gravel and went down to the soft sand and threw my skateboard in the in the bushes and crawled down the um crawled down to the surf and swam for an hour used to love the surf i loved the sand and crawled back back up after exhausted myself for an hour and went to find my skateboard and been stolen you know someone have taken i guess my skateboard out of the out of the bushes and didn't realize that was my motor transport it's like stealing someone's wheelchair it's just pretty frowned upon but um that moment of my life i re i went maybe you need to get over this issue of the wheelchair and give it a go you know you see all your friends loving it let's just have a go so that week at school i jumped in the wheelchair rugby chair and i have never been so happy in my life i felt like i was on the same level playing fielders on my friend for the first time in my life but as you would know kurt you know crawling around for that many years you had so much upper body strength where when i first jumped in the wheelchair i was quicker than my friends i was stronger than my friends and it was an amazing moment in my life and to overcome that wheelchair and find the sport of wheelchair rugby was probably the best moment in my life like i grew up crawling around as well and using all sorts of stuff to get about because the only time i saw wheelchairs was when i went to the hospital and i just saw sick people yeah i didn't see disability or people getting around in chairs that were active and healthy and had choice and power in their life how important is that for for a kid figuring out their path with the disability to see strong active healthy role models right that's a great point and and exactly growing up i didn't see anyone else i guess who was i guess athletic or sporty at the time in a wheelchair of course there was you know athletes in wheelchairs at the time but i guess it wasn't seen on tv um as much so yeah that's what i saw sick people i guess in wheelchairs and and i didn't want to be that person so um i think it's it's absolutely amazing these days that we see so many you know people like yourself kurt um you know who are you know presenting on tv you see you know amazing athletes and and people just see they don't see the you know the wheelchair they're seeing the actual person behind the wheelchair i often get told that i'm fortunate because i was born in a wheelchair and i didn't have to adjust to life going forward but in my in my thought process is that taking the trauma out of the acquiring a disability part at some point in life you need to find a place where you are comfortable with who you are and meet the world at that point as you are yeah did you have one of those moments i've had i guess a few moments like that but to be honest mate i really didn't come out of my shell and accept who i was and be proud of who i was until around the time i met my wife i was about probably 20 years old so yeah it was obviously you know a lot of teenage years there of sort of self-pity and being embarrassed to who i was and you know a lot of people didn't see that they didn't see that riley because i was playing sport at the time but i still was yeah pretty down on myself and still sort of i guess worried that what people thought of me these days obviously you still do have a little bit of you know sometimes where you're like oh what they're going to think of you know myself in a wheelchair or of my abilities or whatnot but i actually just i'm proud of who i am i am i am actually proud of you know australia to be honest in embracing people with disabilities and and and tr and treating us as we should be as normal people we are normal people at the end of the day we just have wheels for legs tell me about your wife how did you beat crystal so i was coming back from an overseas trip i think the uk and i was a little bit jet lagged and was training at 4 35 in the morning at the local gym here in port macquarie and she was training at the same time and i remember when i first met her i was actually balancing on a swiss ball um i was balancing for my core work at the time and i remember her you know i'm going to say that she fled with me first all right she decided to come up and pretend to kick me off the ball and um that just sort of drew my attention that you know no one's ever done that before because usually i guess people uh i guess you see someone in a wheelchair and sometimes a little bit over nice where she just didn't see the wheel she just saw i guess me and what i was doing and and you know mucked around like that so um you know what i think that one of the first times i met sheridan i fell out of my chair and she laughed and i was like i like that one we might have to get them two together oh my god it's a wild night um how hard was it because of covid and i know how much your family support means to you how hard was it not to have your family be able to leave australia because of the borders restrictions while you were competing in tokyo yeah it was it was tough going to tokyo knowing that the family weren't going to be there it they mean so much to you as an athlete because they have been on the journey with you they have sacrificed so much and they have they have understood your sacrifices as well so you know i haven't taken my wife on a honeymoon yet we've been married for almost six years and she still hasn't got a honeymoon we haven't been on a holiday since around 2014. so you know i feel pretty bad about that i'll definitely take her on a honeymoon and a holiday very soon but uh you know the sacrifices she's made for me to be an athlete is something that i'm i'm very very thankful of so you know i definitely want to take her to the paralympics because for us that's the pinnacle of our sports you know the last two paralympic games you know london and rio we had so much success and in rio i i pretty much told her to stay home to to stay with the kids and so i feel like they missed a huge part of my career and i wanted them to come to tokyo so uh when covert hit and they they weren't allowed to go to tokyo it definitely it definitely hurt but you know that they're watching on tv and they're they're proud of you know what you've achieved and who you are and i i put all the families names you know the wife and the kids names on my shoes that are underneath my wheelchair they're good luck shoes and when you get into those moments in a game where you just think you cannot give it any more you you touch those shoes you look at those names and you think who you are doing this for how hard was it with border restrictions as a team sport you weren't able to play together the steelers as a team for almost 18 months how challenging was that when you landed in tokyo a lot tougher than we thought it was going to be to be honest i think when covert struck you know around march 2020 we as a paralympian we we were scared like we're thinking are these games going to be cancelled and it was a pretty scary time but when they delayed the games for one for one year we i think a sense of relief came over us and it was we're just very thankful that they were still considering the games the olympics and paralympics and and that they were going to be on but as an athlete it's not every year we get a shot at these you know these gold medals every four years and you have to dedicate your life for those four years there's a lot of training it's not like we come in six months before the game and start training it's four years of work and prep for those games so you know in march 2020 we'll in our prime we had the focus we had our goal sitting there and to have that delayed a year as i said yes it was it was a relief but it also was just very tough to reset for another year of grinding out training sessions of sacrifice of just hard work that's a lot a year extra of hard work is a lot and it started to take its toll it definitely did it played on my mind a lot that extra year and but we fought through it for us you know we all live in different states so with the border restrictions we couldn't come together as a team so there's a lot of individual training for us and being a team sport you need to gel as a team and without having gameplay training camps um over that sort of 18 months or two year period we started to i guess our game yeah cohesion as a team started to slip away a little bit and we didn't really realize how much until we got to tokyo and it was our first tournament as a as a team and we come out against denmark who you know is a great team but it's a team that we've beaten by 10 20 points previously you know we come out we're all feeling individually really good but we realized that we were very much lacking as a team that we just nothing was automative in the head and you had to think of every play and where everyone was going to be and it just didn't come automatically and you felt a little bit lost out there so it took a few games to get back in the swing of things and tokyo was definitely mentally tough to take for us as a team but looking back on it kurt it was outside of our control we did everything we possibly could training-wise we will fit we're strong but without that cohesion as a team and that gelling as a team it's going to be very hard to try to get you know the gold medal at the pinnacle of our sport i spoke to crystal and she did say that there was talk of retirement after london enrigo in tokyo yeah are we gonna see you in paris or is there going to be an extended uh honeymoon [Laughter] i should say extended honeymoon shouldn't i if crystal's watching this uh mate i i love representing australia like you know i don't want to be someone who looks back in 10 20 years and goes i could have gone to another games i could have gone to another two games and that's something that you cannot change so i sit here now as a 32 year old my body is feeling probably the best it ever has you know i've had my fair share of injuries but i'm learning how to adapt better with my body these days i'm learning so much more about myself i'm learning my limits i i'm mixing up my training and i'm i'm feeling really good and you this is the weird sport mentality and you know this one kurt i'm going it's only three more years that's way better than four okay it's only three more years and then you go oh geez that's like a thousand sessions that's a lot of pain but i i yeah i'm gonna take a couple of months off i think and just enjoy my time with people who have supported me you know my family my friends being on the disc on a friday or saturday afternoon if my friends crack a beer be able to have a beer with them you know and that's that's just huge to me it's and i want to be able to enjoy this now but i also want to come back and throw on the green and gold again awesome may one day you will know you know but it will pop up and it will tell you that you done so i look forward to uh i look forward to seeing riley on the other side of it but i also look forward to seeing riley pull on that green and gold again mate um you might have ruined me because that session has wrecked me for the next couple of weeks but riley bat thanks for joining me on oneplus one cheers thanks [Music] you