Andreas Evelt: Kicking homophobia into touch

Waratahs Israel Folau (second left) and Adam Ashley-Cooper (third left) with players from Australian gay rugby team, the Sydney Convicts. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Gay players tackling homophobia head on but the fight continues to achieve equality in the sport they love

'Faggot!" The Waratahs are playing the Highlanders at Sydney's Allianz stadium. The man in the stand shouts again: "Faggot," aiming it at a Highlander player. Nobody looks at him - besides Brennan. He quietly walks over, taps the man on the shoulder and whispers: "It's not appropriate to use that language in rugby any more. It is bad for the sport. It is terrible for the gay community. You just can't do it any more."

The man turns around and looks at Brennan. After a moment, he replies: "Oh, I didn't know that" and apologises. "Look, just don't do it again," says Brennan and goes back to his seat, as quietly as he came.

Brennan is a rugby player and he is gay. Today he feels comfortable saying that, but for a long time he didn't. "The higher I went, the harder it became," says the 39-year old.

When his club found out that he was gay, he had already been invited to training sessions in the first and second grade. But suddenly they were playing him less. He just didn't fit in, so he left in disgust.

Brennan didn't even watch rugby for four years. "I left the sport that I loved so much because I had the feeling that it had rejected me." That is until he met the Convicts in 2012.

Beside the Brisbane Hustlers and the Melbourne Chargers, the Sydney Convicts are one of three gay and inclusive rugby clubs in Australia. Worldwide there are 60. Diego, 21, is one of the few straight players within the Convicts' first grade.

He doesn't see any difference to an ordinary rugby team: "We train, we play our matches, we watch the professionals play and then we go out and have a good time. And the quality is just as good, the competition just as high."

Some Convicts "would have had the talent to play professionally if they had gone down that path", says Brennan. But gay professional rugby players are hard to find. Many of them are filtered out early.

"If I had been openly gay, I wouldn't have reached rugby's highest echelons," said Gareth Thomas, a Welsh rugby legend, when he came out in 2009.

It's mainly stereotypes that bring homophobia to sports. For many people, everything weak or soft is automatically gay, and that vision of gays doesn't fit a sport like rugby. By tackling just as hard as straight players, gay rugby players also tackle homophobia. The peak of that spirit was this year's Bingham Cup, the gay Rugby World Cup. In August, 30 clubs with about 900 players came to Sydney to play the tournament for the first time in the Southern Hemisphere. One of them was the Falcons, the only gay rugby team in New Zealand.

After the Krazy Knights from Wellington and the Ponsonby Heroes from Auckland dissolved in 2001 and 2004 respectively, New Zealand didn't have a gay rugby team for nine years. Last year, the Falcons came into existence to play the Bingham Cup in Sydney. They finished third in their pool and won the lower-tier competition, the Bingham Bowl, after an enthralling final against Dublin's Emerald Valkyries. The Sydney Convicts proved their quality and won the Bingham Cup for the fourth time. "In every single matter, the tournament was a grand success," says Brennan.

But as long as gay rugby clubs have to exist, being a gay rugby player is still an issue. To achieve equality, the clubs' primary aim is not to be needed any more.

"It shouldn't be the only place where gay people are welcomed," says Brennan. His personal reason to play has changed: "If I can prevent somebody from going through what I've been through and can prevent a team from discriminating against somebody, then I've done my job."

After the Waratahs' 44-16 win against the Highlanders, Brennan and his friend John leave the stadium. As John, of Korean descent, gets teased for his Asian appearance, he asks Brennan: "Is it worth confronting people?" "Yes, absolutely," answers Brennan. "Somebody just has to be the one to say this is not appropriate. People like to do the right thing, but sometimes they don't know what the right thing is."

• Andreas Evelt is studying journalism at the University of Technology in Sydney as an exchange student from Germany.