Richard Cartwright, Wheelchair Rugby Player

Richard Cartwright is a founder member of the Solent Sharks Wheelchair Rugby Team and also a lecturer in Accountancy at Southampton University. I managed to get him into a side room at the Stoke Mandeville Stadium one Saturday in between games for just about long enough to make a decent portrait for Economia Magazine before he headed back out onto the courts to rejoin the fray. The sport combines elements of Rugby, Handball and Basketball and is played with a degree of physical commitment that completely surprised me, with rapid bursts of acceleration, pirouette turns, some amazingly deft manoeuvring at speed, and head-on collisions in defence frequently leading to overturned wheelchairs. Richard is actually a lot more friendly than he looks.......