But on 24 December 1996 everything changed for the then six-year-old.
“I slipped and fell from a cliff, bushwalking with my brother in Western Sydney in the Blue Mountains,” he says.
“I spent Christmas and New Year in a coma and the first three weeks of January 1992. When I woke up, I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t talk, I was paralysed down the right side of my body and the doctors told me I would never walk again.
“When I learned to talk again, my parents tell me that I asked them if I would be able to play soccer that year. They obviously said no.”
Pyne spent the next year in hospital undergoing rehabilitation and the next four years thinking he would never experience the joy of the sport he loves.
He was wrong.
Pyne’s brother found an advertisement for AWD Athletics, a “safe sport” for athletes with disabilities. He signed up and says he managed to achieve some success – but didn’t enjoy it.
“I was a footballer, a team player, so an individual sport was never going to suit.
“Then I remember one evening, my parents got a call, they were starting up a Cerebral Palsy football team to eventually compete in the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.
“That was it. I never went to another athletics meet again, because I’m a footballer.”
The chance to compete in a sport he loves proved to be the chance Pyne needed to seize control of his life again.
“As I grew so did my self-confidence, my image and in turn, my self-esteem. I was no longer the kid at school with a limp, or a cast, or at the worst of times, with a wheelchair. I was a footballer, and an international one at that.”
Pyne made his international debut at 15 years old, and a year later he was at the 2000 Paralympics where he scored a goal against then champions Netherlands in front of a 15,000-strong hometown crowd.
He’s played 84 times for Australia, captaining the side on more than 30 occasions. He has captained his state team New South Wales to nine of the last ten national titles and travelled to exotic destinations all around the World.
“For 15 years I’ve been an international footballer and if my body would let me, I’d do if for 15 more.
“Playing and beating able-bodied teams has helped us to understand our own capabilities and break the stigma associated with disabled sports and disabled players.”
Like traditional football, Paralympic football has a player pathway from Grassroots through to elite – something Pyne is heavily involved in.
“Paralympic football is such an inspiration to disabled players in Australia and Worldwide. The Oceanic region needs, and deserves, a programme like this.
“IT is not only the perfect way to introduce athletes with a disability to sport, but to promote social inclusion and build awareness both locally and globally of the football talent these players have.”
Pyne is a former member of Football Federation Australia’s Paralympic 7-a-side football teams the Pararoos. He was a guest speaker at the Pacific Youth and Sports Conference in Noumea, New Caledonia along with the team’s assistant coach Kai Lammert.

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