Jack Leahy | Senior Editor
“Homosexuality is an “ignored” subject in football and not a “serious subject in the locker room”.”
When former Germany and Aston Villa midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger came out as gay in January, he couldn’t have been referring to Dublin Devils FC, a team for whom LGBT issues were an integral part of the club’s founding and of the.
I was welcomed to the Tuesday training session last week and spoke with some of the club’s longest-serving members about what it means to them and the wider issue of homosexuality in football.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter smiled and suggested that homosexuals should simply “refrain from sexual activity” for the duration of the tournament.
Founded in 2005, the club occupies a niche which gives it greater visibility than most clubs in the Leinster Senior League. The club has more than 1,500 followers on Twitter and my visit is not the first media intrusion into a football session. Yet the club is modest and low-key – nothing distinguishes it from the other football revelers at Phoenix Park on a Tuesday night. While this makes them difficult to find, it also ensures that club membership doesn’t necessarily give a player away to passersby.
The club, like any other, is based on social and footballing pillars. Members spoke of an outlet for competitiveness, a place to make new friends and a refuge from locker rooms configured to not support gay players, or even potentially alienate them. The reality remains that mainstream football, if illustrated by the Venn diagram, would show an intersection between “players” and “open homosexuality” invisible to the naked eye.
“I used to play a lot of Gaelic football, but when I came out I didn’t find a lot of options there that made me feel comfortable,” said Chris, a veteran of the club who directs training, holding a full journalist’s notebook. tactical notes and training exercises.
“Even if I could still have played for my local team, I would have still avoided questions about my sexuality or ‘where were you last night?’ or “Who were you kissing?”. These were questions I didn’t feel comfortable answering.
When I arrived there wasn’t much going on in Dublin in terms of a ‘scene’. There were very few outlets.
“When I arrived at the club, it was like a breath of fresh air. You could actually talk about who you were and where you were. The atmosphere was much more open. In that sense it’s been fantastic – it’s given me both the social and competitive side of sport, which is really important to me. It is important that the club can offer something to everyone.
I asked Chris if a sports locker room, widely known as a space for a certain brand of masculinity, was a difficult place for a gay man in Ireland: “I think it gets better with some people coming out – Robbie Rodgers for example. It’s easy to say that things are generally improving, but you still wouldn’t want to be the person leading the way. You almost wish someone else would do it first. Especially where I come from (rural Ireland), there are still attitudes that make changing rooms uncomfortable.
Chris’ experiences are a clear reminder that we should not idealize the club and its context. This exists because gay men have few opportunities to participate in sports on the same terms as heterosexual players.
At the level of regulatory initiatives, football has always had a gentle and relaxed relationship with LGBT rights. Asked in 2010 about the problem of holding the 2022 World Cup in anti-gay Qatar, FIFA President Sepp Blatter smiled and suggested that gay people should simply “refrain from sexual activity.” » during the duration of the tournament. Germany’s World Cup-winning captain Phillip Lahm warned in 2010 that gay footballers still risk “ruining their careers” by coming out in the current context.
The club’s chairman and caretaker, Bill O’Rourke, has been involved with the club since its inception and has focused his efforts on improving the competitiveness of the teams in the full format of the game while retaining its social roots:
“When I arrived there wasn’t much going on in Dublin in terms of a ‘scene’. There were very few outlets. Then, nine years later, one of the guys founded the club after being in England and seeing gay teams playing – he couldn’t understand why there weren’t any here.”
“At first it was just a joke thing, with no ‘club’ to speak of. It was quite new. I went there very early and it really opened up new possibilities for me to meet people from the same community as me while doing something I really love: playing football.
“I’ve been here almost all this time. I was a player first, then I started getting involved in the organization of the club, trying to bring it together and give it some ambition as an 11-a-side team. We want to have a club open to everyone to come and play – whether socially or seriously.
Although the social side of the club remains alive, highlighted by organized kicking in conjunction with structured training, the club has become a serious prospect in recent years.
The Devils hosted teams from the gay community from across Europe in 2013 as hosts of the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association’s six-man “Euros” competition, which the club won in 2011. They have strong links with gay teams in London, Manchester, Paris and Berlin and entered the Leinster Senior League table for the first time last season. A 7-0 opening day defeat to the reigning cup holders last weekend underlines how difficult the task is.
Photo of Bill O’Rourke, chairman of the Dublin Devils, by Jack Leahy for The University Times.
