Pioneers promoting the full inclusion of gay people in sport still a relative rarity

Last month Jake Daniels gave an interview to Sky Sports, marking a year after he became the first active professional footballer in the UK to come out as gay since Justin Fashanu in 1990.

Reflecting on the previous 12 months in his life, he painted a broad stroke picture of acceptance and support, setting aside for a moment the plague of homophobic abuse that continues to blight football.

For an 18-year-old, Daniels is an extraordinarily mature and self-aware young man. Before he made his decision he had clearly weighed up the potential consequences and had reconciled himself with the risk. In being true to himself he wanted to see if he could move the dial, even a twitch.

Daniels was applauded from many corners of the football world, but if he believed that others would be emboldened to follow his lead those hopes have been disappointed so far. He was asked if he had been contacted privately by any footballer who was even considering coming out and the answer was no.

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“Since I’ve come out there has been rumours of Premier League footballers who might be coming out but you can’t force someone to come out,” he said.

“If they want to come out, then they will. You can’t force it, but hopefully there is that courage to come out because we need that group to keep getting larger so it can just move on in football and it can become the norm.”

In football around the world how many other gay men have come out? Josh Cavallo in Australia a couple of years ago; Jakob Jankto, a Czech international, earlier this year; Zander Murray, who plays in Scotland’s Lowland League. Are there others? Not that I can find. The environment to make that choice in comfort still doesn’t exist.

It begs a number of questions. At what point will it no longer be a story? Or a matter of interest? How long before it will no longer seem necessary for a courageous young man like Daniels to run the gauntlet of social media abuse, in order to chip away at toxic prejudices? Should we expect sportspeople to carry that load?

A fortnight ago Off The Ball broadcast a really interesting interview between Brian O’Driscoll and Lindsey Peat, an extraordinary sportswoman who has represented Ireland at rugby and basketball and played Gaelic football for Dublin. Peat came out when she was 30 and she spoke to O’Driscoll about the dynamics of making that choice in a corner of the public eye.

“We’re under pressure,” she told O’Driscoll. “You shouldn’t have to come out, really. But I do appreciate for the likes of Nick [McCarthy, Leinster rugby] and Gareth [Thomas, former Welsh rugby international] and myself, you take that responsibility – not for yourself, per se. Well, I did it for me, but then to openly and publicly come out you want to help others. You want to break down the barriers. You want to set social norms, so you’re there as a role model.”

Earlier in the conversation O’Driscoll and Peat discussed why it is different across the spectrum of female sports, where gay women can be open and comfortable about their sexuality without the fear of not being accepted. Male sports are still a million miles from that place.

“Why is the female game so far ahead in this regard?” said Donal Óg Cusack last year. “I strongly believe, in the main, it’s a straight man’s problem. It’s not for the gay community to be sorting this thing out. What is going on in a straight man’s world? I honestly believe it’s their problem.

When Cusack came out in his 2009 autobiography Come What May he was the first high-profile GAA player to do so. From the hundreds of letters he received he knew that his book had made an impact on other people’s lives, but in the 14 years since it was published no other high-profile GAA player has made the choice Cusack did. Glibly, we imagined that others would follow. Why? Did we think it was suddenly easy?

That doesn’t mean that the climate for openness hasn’t improved. It has. There is a story Cusack tells that helps illuminate how things have changed. About three years before his book was published he was tipped off that a Sunday tabloid newspaper was planning an exposé on his sexuality.

Cusack’s fear was that the story would be splashed on the day of a big Cork game, landing on their heads as a giant distraction. A reporter arrived unannounced at Cusack’s place of work one day, claiming to have an appointment; she was rumbled and quietly deflected.

The dynamics of the story, though, were of its time: for that newspaper Cusack’s sexuality had a sensational quality. That equation doesn’t exist in the same way now.

“There’s an element now too that some players don’t feel they need to come out,” said Cusack. “That’s definitely an element in it. That’s where the future will be hopefully.”

That is the utopian endpoint: where being private about your sexuality doesn’t feel like you’re hiding something, and being open doesn’t feel like a revelation.

Because sport is so mainstream and is so embedded in the small talk of daily life, it has a role to play in reshaping norms. Not every sport has a developed social conscience, or feels an obligation to step outside its lane, but that power exists nonetheless. Damnable tokenism is the parallel track: professional football fumbles with that.

Gaelic sports, which for generations were defined as conservative and closely aligned with Catholic values, has picked up the torch for inclusivity in recent years. The key to that is visibility. GAA people would have marched in the Dublin Pride parade for years, but not under an official GAA banner; that changed in 2019, and that support will continue next weekend.

Adapting an idea from Women’s Australian Rules, the Camogie Association started a Pride Round in their championships last year, where teams were encouraged to do something small and symbolic to demonstrate their warmth towards the LGBTQ+ community. It was a huge success and was rolled out again for the weekend just gone.

Every small thing helps. Gemma Begley, the Gaelic Players Association’s first Diversity, Inclusion and Diversity manager, summarised the challenge beautifully. “If a flower doesn’t grow in a garden,” she said, “you don’t change the flower, you change the environment around it.”

Sport and society still needs people like Daniels and Peat and Cusack and McCarthy and Thomas. Eventually, we won’t. Inch by inch.