Rugby player on the most difficult, nerve-racking moment of his life: Deciding when to come out
“UK Stadium are a hunt for homophobia”
Over coffee, a current professional rugby player is calmly relaying one of the most difficult and nerve-racking moments of his life: deciding how and when to come out to his team-mates, his coaches and all those of those in a game that in many ways defined him. Ultimately, he had reached a point where he felt he could no longer hide his true self. “I felt I couldn’t be myself in a rugby environment. These were team-mates who I felt close to but I couldn’t be close to,” he says of a decision he agonised over. “I decided that I had to think about who I was as a person before my career.”
But then something unexpected happened. “The reaction was overwhelming, unbelievably good,” he recalls. While not yet ready to take the step of coming out publicly, he is nevertheless more comfortable, more focused and happier in his own skin. As well as a better player. “People say you shouldn’t worry about it, they say: ‘Just get on with it.’ But it was affecting my rugby because it was holding me back,” he says of a sport that puts a huge focus on team spirit and the psychology of the collective. “If you get on better off the field you’re going to be better on the field.”
When the time is right, he will have no qualms about the idea of talking publicly about his sexuality in the same way as the former Wales and Lions international Gareth Thomas and the international referee Nigel Owens, two other gay men within his sport from whom he has drawn strength, have done. “It’s in my head to want to inspire others. Gareth Thomas inspired me.” But, like them, nor does he want his sexuality to define him as a player or a person.
Thomas has movingly relayed how his private battle with his sexuality drove him to the brink of suicide – literally staring over the edge of a cliff as he “lived in fear of being caught out” – and his subsequent redemption once he had come to terms with who he is. For Owens, too, the decision to come out was a huge relief and improved his refereeing once the weight was removed.
“When I was struggling with dealing with who I was, over the next three or four years I got a couple of internationals and I didn’t referee them well because I was still struggling and worrying about people finding out I was gay. It affected my performance,” he recalls. “Once I came out and rugby had accepted me, my performances got better and better. I wouldn’t be able to referee as well as I can now if I was still worried about people finding out about who I am.”
Owens believes that things are slowly changing as more openly gay high-profile sportsmen – from Robbie Rogers in football to Steven Davies in cricket to Michael Sam in NFL or the diver Tom Daley – challenge the prevailing culture. “I came out, then Gareth. The trickle is slowly becoming something more. Once it happens more, it won’t be news anymore. That’s the challenge,” says the referee.
But it will always be a hugely personal decision and one informed by the dressing-room culture of the club or country in which the sportsman or woman in question lives and works. It may also be a very different set of calculations for an established international – or a self-possessed, strong-minded referee such as Owens – than a 17-year-old trainee hoping for his or her first contract.
The results of the most comprehensive international survey into homophobia in sport, published on Sunday in the Observer, show that the challenges for gay men and women in both professional and grassroots sport remain forbidding. The UK element of an international survey that involved more than 9,500 respondents – both gay and straight – contains rays of hope as well as plenty of reasons to despair.
Among those under 22, more gay men who played team sports were more likely to be out among their fellow players than in any other country. Among lesbian women, only the United States had a higher proportion. Despite that, even among that younger cohort more than 70% had yet to reveal their sexuality to all or some of their team-mates. More than half of gay men and 28% of lesbian women feared they would be bullied and almost a third overall were worried they would be discriminated against by coaches and officials. More than four in 10 were concerned about being rejected by team-mates. UK participants were also the second most likely to believe that LGB people were “not accepted” in sporting culture.
“There are more under-22s out and playing sport in the UK, which is a great finding. Over the last few years there has been a massive change in the equality agenda, which has more noticeably impacted on young people. Older gay people are still hesitant and not even going into amateur sport,” explains Professor Ian Rivers of Brunel University, who sat on the international expert panel that oversaw the Out on the Fields study.
“We’re starting to recognise it’s not such a big deal – it’s about those who can play and those who can’t. It’s a shame we’re still waiting for those big name athletes to come out and that we don’t have a Premier League player who is out.” But amid the blizzard of statistics, another jumps out. An astonishing 85% of the UK participants believed that an openly gay, lesbian or bisexual person would not be safe as a spectator at a sporting event. “Where the concern lies is with the attitude of spectators. That is one of the things that clubs are having to deal with. It has to be a cultural shift within society,” says Rivers.
If bile-filled homophobic abuse from the stands – symptomatic of the festival of hate some grounds can become, where no insult is too offensive in trying to goad the opposition – would be enough to make even the strongest gay footballer think twice about coming out, then Owens can understand why even a vocal minority of the small-minded can have a corrosive effect.
“Out of 100 rugby players, there might be two or three who might find it uncomfortable. Out of 80,000 people there are maybe a couple of hundred who shout something,” he says. “I can honestly say I find the changing room safe, the environment safe. I can totally understand that there is a lot of work that needs to be done and I can understand why some people would not want to come out when they hear some homophobic chants.”
It is in football that the discomfort seems most palpable. For John Amaechi, the British former NBA star turned psychologist and broadcaster who was one of the first sports stars to come out, the lack of progress made by the national game is a source of frustration. “The data suggests we are not where we should be. The rhetoric suggests far more progress than has actually been evidenced. The efforts have been purposefully minimal,” he says.
“Many of the efforts made by organisations with copious amounts of cash have been window dressing and nothing more. Groups of well-meaning people sitting on inclusion boards are being used as cover for people who otherwise choose to do nothing.” Amaechi says he has spoken to big name sponsors who are starting to wonder whether their company values are compatible with a game that has not grasped the nettle in dealing with inclusion issues. “They could do something about this tomorrow. I have zero interest in some kind of fake fairness – it’s about access to the best possible talent. Many of the people within football can’t operate at their best because they can’t operate within this ridiculous culture.”
The RFU showed the extent to which the tone is set from the top when it banned two spectators for two years each for directing homophobic abuse at Owens during last November’s match between England and the All Blacks at Twickenham. It might embolden other sporting bodies to take similar action if they knew that the ban was a material factor in encouraging our anonymous player to come out to his team-mates.
But in most football grounds, in particular, a day when homophobic abuse is seen as being as unacceptable as racist language by fellow supporters feels a long way off. “The problem is still fear. I don’t think a lot of people in their 20s and 30s appreciate what they are doing when they are being abusive. They are doing it because everyone else is. The hurt and the pain doesn’t matter to them,” says the Kick It Out chairman, Lord Ouseley.
“The thing about homophobia is that the people in the boardroom or at FA HQ aren’t doing enough. It’s all very well for David Cameron to sign a pledge and host a photocall,” says Ouseley, referring to a star-studded No10 reception held by the prime minister in 2011 in which he admitted “we should be doing far more to make people feel comfortable” to come out in professional sport.
“There is an ignorance that floats around homophobia,” says Ouseley of the temptation to dismiss abuse as banter. “It inflicts pain but it’s not taken as seriously as it should be in the way it is being policed. There is a recognition within the FA that this is important but there’s not enough seriousness.”
Owens also believes that football has a particular issue. “For whatever reason, I can understand why people feel they can’t come out in football,” he says. “They would get that vitriolic abuse. That sums up why they feel they can come out in rugby but not in football.”
One intriguing suggestion made by Rivers is that the “athlete ally” scheme that has helped in the US could be imported to the UK to help change dressing-room culture. “Straight athletes at all levels of sport should be encouraged to be encouraged to be an ally and a supporter of anyone struggling with their sexuality,” recommends the report, alongside a “zero tolerance” approach to homophobic abuse from players and fans.
But the report highlights the extent to which the issues go much deeper. At that same No10 reception four years ago, Cameron pledged to do more to tackle homophobic bullying in schools. One of the key recommendations of the report is that PE teachers, coaches and sports officials should receive rudimentary and mandatory training on how best to support LGB athletes.
Individual gay rights groups do good work and the FA has tried to broaden its inclusion agenda to embrace LGBT issues, even if episodes like that last January in which the former Birmingham player Michael Johnson was forced to step down from its Inclusion Advisory Board over homophobic slurs do not help.
More broadly, an international sporting culture that refuses to take a stand on Russia’s introduction of draconian anti-gay laws just ahead of their showpiece Sochi Winter Olympics or indulges the distasteful ramblings of the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, when he joked gay fans visiting Qatar for the 2022 World Cup should “refrain from sexual activities” is not likely to set a tone of acceptance.
Yet it is also in the reaction to the decisions of Thomas, of Owens, of Rogers, of Daley, of Australian women’s cricket international Alex Blackwell and others in deciding to come out that hope for the future lies. “You’ve got myself and Gareth Thomas and other people who can make a difference. The governing bodies can make a difference,” says Owens. “But it’s those bystanders who can also make the difference and report people. They set the tone. It’s the people in the stadium who can make the difference.”
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