Swansea University Futsal forward Adam Orme believes their UEFA Futsal Champions League campaign can help continue the growth of the sport in Wales.
The Swans are set to face Polish side Rekord Bielsko-Biała in a one-legged tie away from home.
Orme insisted the exposure of the sport could see more clubs form a futsal team.
“We’ve kind of tried to push and promote futsal during this trip through our media and I really think we can grow futsal as a sport in the UK,” he said.
“I hope we can push the FAW league to get more teams involved because, especially now with us being quite a presence in Welsh domestic football, hopefully other teams are looking at us now and thinking they can have a bit of that as well.
“I think last season there were nine teams in the league and I think it can be a lot better. I think there’s room for progress in the league and I think we just need more teams, maybe a few more coaches who want to get into it and get involved with stuff like this. This is a fantastic opportunity for everyone.
‘’You’ve got your football clubs in Wales and you’ve got your first team, that’s fine but you could have a side project that’s a futsal team who are not so much your first team boys but are boys who are around the club and keen to play week in week out.
They could have an opportunity to come to places like this and play Champions League futsal and you’d never think that as a boy growing up. I’m going to be playing Champions League futsal, that’s mad.”
Having been named champions of the Conference South for the first time in their history at the end of last season, Orme is relishing the prospect of a tough test in the Champions League.
“We’re playing against the Polish champions who are a very good team,” the forward insisted.
“They’ve already started their season so they’re already eight games into their season now and they’ve been on a very good streak to be fair. They’ve lost one game and that was this weekend.
“They’re a team of professional players, a few have a lot of Polish National caps as well and Poland are a very well ranked team in the nations so it will be a very good to test myself against players like that.
I think this team’s going to be one of the best and have the best players I’ve ever played against in my career in futsal. I’ve been playing for three or four years now in Wales and these are definitely going to be some of the best players I’ve come up against.”
Both Swansea’s football and futsal teams have seen a great deal of success of late, with the football side finishing top of the Cymru South, denied promotion to the Cymru Premier having failed to achieve a Tier One license.
Orme believes the success is down to the talented staff employed at the university.
“We have a big programme with a lot of players. We have trials every year and we get 200-300 boys trialling. Obviously, from those, not everyone’s going to get into the first team, so we have seven football teams plus a futsal team as well.
“So, on trials day, I’ll go down and scout and ask a few boys if they want to get involved in the futsal team and this trip now will definitely encourage a few boys to get involved and grow the sport.
“I’ve played now, I think this is my fourth year with Swansea’s football team, my second with the futsal team and going from division three all the way from Division Three all the way up to the Cymru South has been a massive climb, but we’ve done it quite quickly to be fair.
“That’s all been down to the programme and the staff we have on board. We have so many coaches who help us out and massive credit to them in the background that really help us to achieve what we want to achieve.
“On paper, that’s a massive achievement. But again, if if wasn’t for them recovery sessions after our Saturday games to play Sunday futsal games, if it weren’t for them sessions, we wouldn’t be where we were. Especially, some boys even play bucks on a Wednesday so that’s three games a week.
It’s a credit to our staff and what they do for us is magnificent and preventing injuries, planning out our weeks if some boys are doing too much, just do light sessions. If others aren’t playing, we can put them in the futsal squad and get some game time so there’s opportunity for everything.”
Ahead of the clash with the Polish champions, Orme thanked the FAW for their contribution to the Swans being able to compete in Europe.
‘’We’ve had so much help on this trip from the FAW,” he said.
“They’ve really pushed for us to come away. The league didn’t finish the way we wanted it to finish due to COVID, finishing on goal difference per game. I think we finished 0.4 goals on top and that is tough on everyone.
“But the FAW have been fantastic from the start. From the moment the league finished, we’ve had everyone there helping out. It’s been the safest I’ve ever felt during this pandemic to be honest. It’s been awesome.”
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