Chris Rattue: Heroes in lesson of tolerance

This country's only gay rugby team have become yesterday's heroes.

The Ponsonby Heroes are gone, after seven seasons blazing an unusual trail through the Auckland social grade.

They might be the only team in history with a sexual-orientation quota, after they struggled to field a side with full membership qualifications.

"We had a few straight guys in the team but we always aimed to have at least 10 gay players," says Chris Barris, the manager until last year.

Why should we care about the Heroes?

One of the greatest All Blacks tells us why.

Bryan Williams is not of the same sexual persuasion as the Heroes, but he'll do his best to persuade them back on to the field.

Williams and another Ponsonby All Black, the late Lin Colling, backed the concept when gay players approached the club in the late 1990s.

Williams, the club's director of rugby, told me: "I'm very disappointed ... hopefully the team starts again, maybe even this year.

"They were good club men. And most importantly, they illustrated there is tolerance for everyone in the game."

Williams is actually the Heroes' hero.

The legendary wing never wavered in his support. So when the Heroes played a gay Australian team last year, it was for the Bryan Williams Cup.

"He's been incredible," says Barris. "He watches every game he can and has been our biggest supporter. We asked him if we could name the trophy after him and he said, 'No problem'.

"I held a party after the Australian game and he came along for a couple of hours and gave a funny and interesting speech.

"The Australians were in awe of him - he's one of our greatest All Blacks. They said they would never have got a Wallaby to turn up."

Not all the Heroes' memories are good ones.

They struggled to find players in the first season, and also for acceptance from opponents.

"But those teams came to realise our guys can actually play and are not a lot of softy poofters running around the field," says Barris.

"You wouldn't even have known they were gay. We had all shapes and sizes, from big Samoan blokes to skinny little white guys."

The tolerance message didn't reach everywhere. Last year, one team of older-than-usual opponents abused and taunted the Heroes and instigated fights, leading to Ponsonby lodging a complaint.

Yet a younger team from the same club arranged a friendly match against them, as did other teams around the city. The Heroes were seen as playing in the best spirit of the game, and made a point of having an after-match clubroom drink.

And maybe they have broken down some barriers. Opponents who were reticent about playing them in the early days became happy to lend them players when the Heroes were short of numbers.

The humour flowed then, especially at scrum time when opponents ribbed their team-mates about packing down in a homosexual huddle.

The Heroes' finest season was two years ago, when they finished third and beat every opponent, including social-grade top dogs University. And they powered to victory in the Bryan Williams Cup game.

The best-established gay team in the world is the San Francisco Fog, who also encourage participation from other "under-represented" groups such as men of colour.

The gay world cup is named in honour of the Fog's most famous player Mark Bingham, a redoubtable character who, on September 11, 2001, was among the passengers who fought the terrorists on Flight 93, causing it to crash in a field.

Gay rugby is struggling here, however. The Wellington Knights folded and now the Heroes' numbers have dwindled away.

Barris, a national sales manager, says: "The team has led the way in getting gay people into sport and being accepted. Rugby is the last bastion of the New Zealand male world of beer and all that sort of stuff.

"This is a big shame. Once the team folds, it will be difficult to get it started again. And I feel we've let Bryan Williams down."