Eastriggs teen representing Scotland at Deaf European Championships

18 year old Zak Hodgson will be with the Scotland men's national deaf team at the European championships which kicks off this weekend.

It's the first time Scotland have made the competition and will share their group with England, Wales, Greece and Germany.

It's not been an easy ride to get there though, the team had to raise 40 thousand pounds in order to fund the trip.

It'll be Zak's first time playing in a competition with Scotland, having only found out about the team in November and playing 2 games since then.

He said: "There'll be 12 teams competing, countries from all over Europe.

"I got contacted by the manager and he invited to come up and train in Glasgow. I did a couple of sessions with them and then I've been with them ever since. I got selected for the squad about a month ago.

"We had to raise £40 thousand total but we got a lot of support from people around the world. We'd like to thank all the people that supported us to get there.

"It wasn't that long ago it didn't look likely we were going to go. We kind of accepted that. But then we raised about 15 thousand in a matter of hours and I think from that night onwards I think everyone started to believe.

"It's a massive honour to play for my country. I didn't think I'd ever be able to do anything like this."

Deaf football doesn't rely on the refs whistle and of course communication is more challenging when on the pitch.

Zak added: "I played hearing football all my life, but when I played deaf football I wasn't allowed to wear my hearing aids. It's a massive change and your awareness has to be 100 per cent at all times.

"I've got like 80 per cent hearing loss so I can hear a tiny bit but the majority of my hearing is gone.

"The heats going to be tough to. It'll be 30 degrees when we play the games so we're going to just have to take it each game at a time."