FORMER Portsmouth, Reading and Cambridge United striker Dave Kitson played at all levels of the EFL over 13 years. After a Twitter account purporting to be from a gay Championship player about to come out was deleted, the ex-Stoke star has his say as he reflects on his own experiences from the dressing-room. I COULDN’T […]
FORMER Portsmouth, Reading and Cambridge United striker Dave Kitson played at all levels of the EFL over 13 years.
After a Twitter account purporting to be from a gay Championship player about to come out was deleted, the ex-Stoke star has his say as he reflects on his own experiences from the dressing-room.
I COULDN’T have cared less as to the identity of the gay footballer.
But before the mystery man deleted his Twitter account on Wednesday morning, around 17,000 followers did.
The so-called Championship player had promised to out himself in the coming weeks, as if being gay were some kind of trophy.
Frankly, I found the whole thing rather distasteful.
I’m always asked whether I’ve played alongside gay footballers.
The subject remains an unhealthy obsession not just of some fans, but of journalists too. And the answer is yes. I played in the same team as a gay footballer as long ago as my Cambridge United days, and I have since.
Within the confines of our changing room the sexuality of the player was the subject of much whispering, but it wasn’t a problem, not for us at least.
He didn’t want to come out and we didn’t want to force him. It was an unspoken agreement that worked, even if it did nothing for the progression of gay footballers.
But as with every elephant in the room, it only takes a bad day at the office for one individual before the knives come out.
And rather surprisingly that turned out to be from our manager.
Furious with my team-mate’s lack of physical commitment on the pitch he roared at him, “Are you f***ing gay or something!?”
It could have been a subconscious reaction, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was a deliberate barb designed to inflict maximum offence.
Everything about the gay footballer was guesswork, and therefore his motives could have been very well-intentioned before his sudden change of heart.
After all, cultural norms aren’t fixed, they change with the passage of time.
I believe exploiting one’s sexuality is slightly disingenuous and goes against the LGBT+ foundation’s mantra that “believes in a fair and equal society”. But that doesn’t mean this man’s approach, in revealing his sexuality through social media, would have been any less difficult or important.
Coming out is understandably a deeply personal decision and while I can’t exactly empathise, I can certainly imagine the reservations a player may have about playing professional football as a gay man.
If in 2019 we still have morons racially abusing our players from the stands, then we’d have to assume that they’d think nothing of slinging homophobic insults around too.
On Tuesday the Sun ran a story about a Premier League player who wants to come out but his club are hugely worried about a “backlash from fans”.
I’d be amazed if that turned out to be the case in this country. I can’t believe for one second that fans would protest en masse, but unfortunately a single idiot is often all it takes.
At the moment many clubs have no idea how to handle the situation and they care less about the player and more about their brand.
Clubs that are huge in certain overseas territories may well be worried about the reaction of their supporters in those countries. But as one director of football told me, “from a commercial standpoint, having a gay player could be massive for the club”. Both are sad indictments of where some of our biggest clubs stand on the issue.
I’d always been of the opinion that players would find the changing room as something of a safe haven but in the same article the Sun referenced a story from last year where two team-mates of a gay player left a note under his kit that read, “F****t” before his alleged lover “was then abused when a phallic sex toy was left on his car”.
An African player also told his team-mates that he objected to men having a sexual relationship on religious grounds.
And so it will be a very brave man who goes first.
With that in mind, perhaps the Gay Footballer’s approach could have been exactly what the game was waiting for. Then again, it could easily have been a ruse that now risks setting the whole movement back again.
Sometimes I wish we could start men’s football all over again.
Around 130 years of history has brought with it a closeted culture that makes anything out of the ordinary difficult to accept. And that is to the eternal shame of the modern game.
I’ve mentioned previously that I gained my coaching badges alongside the Reading women’s team.
Many of the players are in openly gay relationships and since that week at Reading College many of them have become firm friends.
The closest of those friends played in the World Cup for England this summer and shortly after that painful semi final defeat to the U.S I sent her a text to say how proud I was of her as a fellow Reading-ite.
Not because she is gay and not because she is a woman, but because she is a footballer who tried her heart out to make our country proud. Just one footballer to another.
In the case of Twitter’s gay footballer I found the exploitation at odds with the fact that everybody’s sexuality should be treated as equal.
In other words, why make a big thing of being gay if equality, normality and acceptance is the ultimate goal? If only it was that simple.
