This is Adelaide… with a soccer star
As the World Cup quarter-finals approach and Australians tune in to the beautiful game, photographer Alex Frayne captures a player ensuring the sport is on the radar of Australian amputees. See the pictures.
Adelaide’s Dalmas Otieno was four years old when he lost his left leg after being hit by a bus in Thika, Kenya – about 40 kilometres from Nairobi. Growing up playing sports with other children with disabilities made him fall in love with soccer.
“We had other schools for the disabled which came together for inter-school competitions so for me, soccer started when I was young, and I’ve loved it since I was that young, and even watching the normal football through World Cups or the African Cup of Nations,” Dalmas says.
Dalmas went on to captain the Kenya National Amputee Football Team he helped establish in 2010, four years before the team qualified for the inaugural Amputee Football World Cup in Mexico in 2014. He continued to play amputee football professionally in Turkey for six years from 2014 to 2020.
Now, aged 40 and living in Adelaide, Dalmas wants to see the sport become more accessible to Australians with a disability.
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“I came here in 2024, and I said, ‘you know what, I want to start Amputee Soccer for a while; it still doesn’t exist in Australia’. I’m here, and I thought it was the right time,” he says.
“It’s a very popular sport in Africa. For me, soccer has been very close to me as a player or as a fan, and I know it’s not as popular as AFL in Australia, but I believe it is a sport that can pick up.”
Dalmas founded the Amputee Soccer Federation Australia in October 2025, and has spent time since then meeting with sporting commissions, and attending community open days and schools to drum up interest.
He hopes to first create social leagues that lead to national competition for any amputees to take part and have “a chance to experience how international amputee soccer competitions are played”.
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“Through my experience in Kenya and other countries that have joined amputee Soccer, it takes between 10 to 15 years for a country to really stabilise in terms of getting players and training and giving them the experience they need to be able to compete in a World Cup competition.”
Looking in the much nearer future, Dalmas – who has been waking up at 3am to watch World Cup matches – says he will be supporting Morrocco in the quarter-finals this weekend.
“Growing up I’ve always supported Brazil, they’re born with the talent…but unfortunately they’ve been knocked out,” he says.
“I think I’ll be going for Morrocco because it’s the only African team left in the competition, and France has been a world champion before, Argentina has been a world champion before, Spain.
“I think maybe it’s time for a new champion.”
Alex Frayne is an Adelaide-based photographic artist and regular contributor to InDaily.
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