Resilience and progress headline this week’s Team of the Week.
Women’s sport continues its rise, grassroots basketball gets a major boost, and England’s Wheelchair Rugby League side deliver a strong comeback. Add Tom Lockyer’s inspirational return to the pitch, and you’ve got a week that sums up everything great about sport.
Who’s in your Team of the Week?
England Wheelchair Rugby League
Wheelchair Rugby League Ashes: First Test
The first Ashes test of the series was claimed by England, securing a commanding 56-28 victory over Australia. World champions, England, trailed 28-26 on Queensland's Gold Coast before their late rally, scoring five unanswered tries in the final 23 minutes, with Halifax Panthers’ Rob Hawkins scoring a hat-trick.
Basketball England
Investment in grassroots basketball
More than £600,000 has been invested to renovate 17 basketball courts across Birmingham, inspired by the success of England’s teams at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The upgrades aim to boost grassroots participation, providing safe, free spaces for young people to play and develop a lasting basketball legacy in the city.
Tom Lockyer
Bristol Rovers defender
If you had told Tom Lockyer at the start of 2024 that he’d ever return to a football pitch, he would’ve told you that you were crazy. After suffering a cardiac arrest on the pitch in December 2023, Lockyer’s heart stopped for almost three minutes — something that would usually be a career, if not life, ender. But not for Tom. Just 22 months later, he returned to the pitch for Bristol Rovers, and despite the result not going his way, I think we can all agree that the result wasn’t the most important thing.
Women’s Sport
More growth for women’s sport
There’s been a significant increase in the number of people watching women’s sport, according to a report by the Women’s Sport Trust. Women's sport was watched by record female audiences in the UK this summer across both broadcast and digital platforms, with record viewing hours and strong engagement across this summer's major tournaments.
