So I love listening to podcasts and I was listening to one of my favourites this morning - the BBCs The LGBT Sports Podcast. As you may be able to deduce from the title, it’s about people in sports who’s only thing in common is they’re LGBTQ. Today’s episode was about the second anniversary of the podcast and it ended up making me think of the oft asked question “will we ever see a footy [AFL] ever come out when they’re playing?”
The first thing that needs to be addressed is why have I attached the “while playing” moniker to the end of the supposition. The reason is simple- it pains me to say this but for the greatest influence and impact we need to see the player come out while they’re still playing. I will go into the issue further on in this post though.
The Current State of Play in the AFL.
To address the issue of gay players we must first look at the current state of the societal play in the Australian Football League.
Anyone that watches the news in Melbourne knows that sports in Melbourne is more news here then actual proper news and in recent years all that’s in the sport news is how trashy the sport has become; and I don’t mean the good kind of trash either.
Just looking at 2020 alone and with the AFL finding ways to bend the rules in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC!!!, we saw them transition to a hub system originally based in both Queensland and New South Wales before transitioning just to Queensland. In a desperate attempt to make any form of money, the AFL literally spent hundreds of millions of dollars to move people out of Victoria- including family members!!!!
It was a system that was designed to fail- “locking” people up in a resort and banning them from spending any significant time from people outside the lockdown of their resort accommodation. Lo and behold it failed and continues to fail on a spectacular and regular occurrence; frequently in the news we see players going out on the town and getting drunk, domestic violence allegations (as per standard!), general violence allegations. We also have seen a players wife decided staying a luxury resort wasn’t good enough and decided she needed some “me” time at a day spa
This is just 2020 alone here and you can already see that the the AFL has a problem- to be fair with covid-19, not a problem entirely of its own making. But what is the AFLs problem is the mentality and the boys club mentality that is rife.
Before moving onto my original next point, I have to mention one of the developing scandals of the 2020 season- that is the groping scandal that has hit at least Richmond and Melbourne, but I think it would be safe to say go on at probably a lot more clubs then we realise.
The GGS (as I like to call the Great Groping Scandal) started when a journalist question Richmond over footage of players groping another player repeatedly. Comments on social media pretty amounted to the fact that it’s a “boys will be boys thing” and for the media to shut the fuck up, while another commentator equated it to being of a racist player (one of the players who was repeatedly groped is of a Sudanese background).
I think that it probably wasn’t racist or of racist tendencies, BUT it is an example of how the sexism and misogynistic behaviour is deeply ingrained into the playing behaviour of men in such a macho environment. There’s been so many allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence leveled against AFL players over the years its hard to keep track of, so why is it surprising that they think that groping each other is perfectly acceptable? The surprising bit is that there’s no allegations of homo eroticism in it, because quite frankly the AFL is very homoerotic despite the fact that it’s also quite homophobic at the same time. They are quick to slap each other on the arse, but any mention of gayness and they trot out the “no homo” saying like they were a bunch of American college frat boys!
With that in mind, it’s no surprise that there’s no gays in the AFL- I mean so far I’ve shown that the AFL is nothing but a scandal riddled organisation that at its best could be described as laissez faire, but at its worse as criminally responsible for a lot of things (I’m sure you could imagine what they are!)
If you’re a closeted young boy, watching your heroes groping other guys and/or engaging in behaviour of morally dubious origin, would you really want to be involved in such an organisation? As a teenager you are already questioning why are you different from other boys so what would you do when you’re confronted with having to go after your dream or being true to yourself?
It’s a said state of affairs that we have a league that’s so heavily macho and scandal riddled that it’s no surprise it’s one of the last bastions of heteronormativity; after all if there’s little to token effort made on gender diversity and domestic violence, what hope do we have of the league being inclusive of the queers in sport if all we have is a token “Pride round” involving a single game? A Pride round that’s only possibly because of the inclusion and campaigning of a few cogs in the system.
The NRL and NRU.
The logical comparison in Australia is with both Rugby League and Rugby Union; which is where things get interesting
NRL- Ian Roberts
Anyone with a remote interest in league will be aware of Ian Roberts. While he was before my time, by all accounts he was a tough bastard who gave it as good as he got it.
Towards the end of his time playing with Manly in 1995; Roberts publicly came out, but sadly since then there hasn’t been any more league players came out.
It’s certainly interesting why there hasn’t been- like any sports there’s probably been rumours about players and no doubt will continue to be- and also frustrating. Could it be like the AFL and be because of a heteronormativity boys club behaviour? After all one of the key scandals for the NRL is sex scandals and a lot of these scandals certainly scream “homo erotic” to me, along with the playing style of the game!
Rugby Australia (ARU)
I’m sure most of those who are reading this are probably aware of the very salient point I’m going to make so I do apologise, however ladies and gentlemen of the jury may I present to you Israel Folau.
The biggest question is where do I begin about this bigoted arsehole?
The most salient point to begin with is to bring to the forefront yet again the fact that this “delightful” individual not too long ago was spotted in the front cover of a gay Australian newspaper trumping the sports inclusivity towards the gay community.
My how the tables have turned!
In the intervening years we have seen this individual decide to become (selectively) religious and decide to start shouting some insane crazy and homophobic bullshit. When called out on it, he decide to yell discrimination and sue Rugby Australia for breach of contract.
I’m not anti religious by any means- believe whatever you want to believe if you ask me- but using it as an excuse to go cray cray and abuse others is a load of Boulderdash if you ask me especially if you’re excuse is using it to say they should die, while selectively ignoring the bits about no tattoos but for one example!
With that in mind one can still note that there’s no openly gay rugby union players in Australia. Where are these players?!?!
The Beautiful Game- Football (Soccer)
Widening our glance, let us turn to the state of the beautiful game in both Australia and the United Kingdom.
In Australia, soccer is our third major code and not surprisingly we don’t have an out gay player at a top tier level.
In 2019, while playing in the Australian National Premier League, Andy Brennan become the first professional football player to come out in Australia. While not in the A League (the top level of football in Australia), Brennan did play for the Newcastle Jets between 2015 and 2017.
AFL- A bad case of toxic masculinity?
The question itself is perfectly sound, especially in the context I’ve outlined above. After all we have a culture that domestic violence is treated with kiddie gloves (compared with the NRLs no fault stand down clause), and a booze and drug culture that is rampant throughout the country.
This is a culture that is the last bastion of the old boys club; where people think they can get away with their chauvinistic behaviour and that poofs shouldn’t be in the game.
This is a culture where it wouldn’t be welcoming with open arms to one of the “fags”- I’m sure there might be a lot of open minded people, but on a whole I think it’s fairly safe to refer to the AFL as the Anti-Faggot League. If their homophobic comments weren’t enough, you could be as sure as shit that the gay player would need to be a gun player, as the old white boys wouldn’t accept anything less then that. This would also be ironic because these old bastions would be yelling out sexist, chauvinistic epithets while expecting the player to be 100% perfection
Coming Out While Playing.
Earlier on in this post, I mentioned that in an ideal world any gay footy player should come out while playing for the greatest possible effect.
It’s a sad state of the world to make a persons coming out( an act that’s deeply personal and terrifying) so political; after all we should come out when we’re free and able to in a safe and supporting environment. But the fact does remain is that the sporting field is the biggest playing field that society has and politically speaking can have the strongest effect.
I am loathed to use the term “normal” or any variation on it, but the fact does remain a lot of people think of homosexuality as “wrong” blah blah blah. Therefore could you imagine how much of an impact it would have on the psyche of the bigoted homophobes if they saw an out proud gay man on the field, kicking goal after goal?
More impotently imagine the impact on a young flowered gay fella of seeing one of the idols having such a impact and knowing they’re exactly like them?
Final Thoughts.
Truth be told it’s hard to say if we’ll ever have an out AFL player anytime soon; after all we’ve only ever had one in the NRL and that was 25 years ago!
I truly don’t know and that’s the worrying thing- I mean if we had one would it end up in a situation like it did with the young Justin Fashanu?
Fashanu was a football player in England who was forcibly outed by a tabloid in 1990. The results were as bad as one thinks and in 1998 he ended up killing himself.
The other alternative could again be similar to what we’ve seen in the English Premier League, wherein the last twelve months we saw a Twitter account labeled “the gay footballer” started with the author allegedly a gay footballer (duh!) playing at a major level and preparing to come out. When push came to shove, on the day of their supposedly coming out they posted an apologetic tweet and subsequently deleted their Twitter account.
Same industry but two vastly different results. You can see why it’s so hard to say what could happen here can’t you?
In an ideal world, we would live in the universe that’s inhabited by the amazing characters written by this magnificent author Sean Kennedy. In his Tigers and Devils universe (also the name of the first novel), you see the results of what happens if we have a gay AFL player. More importantly (in my mind) you also see in his Get Out series of teenage novels what happens when you have a teenager out from the get go and their trials and tribulations as they try to network both not only a high school environment but also a hyper masculine environment such as the AFL while trying to achieve their dreams.
Will this environment ever exist?
I can only but hope.