“I always describe myself in three ways.
At the age of two, Toby Addison was diagnosed with the onset of the first rod and retinitis, which meant that his eyes would slowly weaken.
Doctors predicted he would go blind at his age, and at the age of 16 he lost his eyes. He had to stop playing football and he didn’t hit the ball for eight years. He is now playing blind football for England and in 2024 he first made it to San Diego.
“When I was 16 I started using sugar cane with screen readers and changed my life to live without vision,” 23 -year -old from Chichester said. “Now I don’t care, I don’t have any vision that can be used. I can see the light and say it’s during the day, but I couldn’t see anyone standing in front of me.
“I was introduced to football when I was 21 years old and from then on I never looked back. That went into my contents and dominated my will by playing football.”
In January 2022, Toby went to watch the comedy show and his piece went to the virus. There were several opinions of Toby’s doubt and he decided to make his own video to respond to the comments.
More than a thousand videos later, Toby still creates the contents of the team and his partner Natalie, who converts the videos and “makes it behind the curtain”.
Toby has joint social media following over 420,000 and helping himself in the application process for the final pundit position.
“It will be proud, but I believed I would be chosen,” he said. “I stand in some way. I am a blind boy who plays football. You don’t see too often. I thought ‘Go on, I love it’.
“It felt amazingly selected from a large pool of applicants. It’s about confidence and I don’t think you will get more from 400 who would bring back more than I do.”
