Last Pundit Standing: Meet the final two vying to be BBC’s next football expert

“I always describe myself in three ways. I am a content creator, I am a disability advocate and a blind footballer.”

At the age of two, Toby Addison was diagnosed with early onset rod cone dystrophy and retinitis pigmentosa, which meant his eyesight would slowly deteriorate.

Doctors predicted he would go blind in his late teens, and at the age of 16 he lost his sight. He had to stop playing football and didn’t kick a ball for eight years. Now he plays blind football for England and in 2024 made his senior debut in San Diego.

“When I was 16 I started using a cane and screen readers and adapted my life to live without vision,” the 23-year-old from Chichester said. “I now don’t pay any attention to it, I don’t have any useable vision. I can see light and tell it’s daytime, but I wouldn’t be able to see anyone standing in front of me.

“I was introduced to blind football when I was 21 and from then I never looked back. That fed its way into my content and it reignited my love for playing football.”

In January 2022, Toby went to watch a comedy show and a clip of him went viral. There were a number of comments doubting Toby’s condition and he decided to make a video of his own responding to the comments.

More than a thousand videos later, Toby is still creating content and teams up with his partner Natalie, who edits the videos and “is the one who makes it tick behind the scenes”.

Toby has a combined social media following of more than 420,000 and backed himself in the application process for the Last Pundit Standing.

“It’s going to sound arrogant, but I believed I would be selected,” he said. “I stand out in a certain way. I am a blind lad who plays blind football. You don’t see that very often. I thought ‘go on, I fancy it’.

“It felt amazing to be selected from such a large pool of applicants. It’s about believing in yourself and I don’t think you would find many from that 400 that would back themselves more than me.”