We Are Gay and We Love Football Too

A few posts back, you'll see that I wrote a blog about being in a BBC documentary. Well... It's now out there for the world to see and the feedback we received and still are receiving has been incredible. The whole world of filming, to meeting like-minded people and other gay footballers to the actual bizarre feeling of watching yourself on TV... The whole thing has been a fantastic experience.

There was a point very late on when I had a funny feeling it wasn't going to be broadcast at all. At exactly the same time, out and proud rugby player Gareth Thomas released a documentary for BBC Wales about the same subject, and I thought it may be a case of not releasing two shows on the same thing. But, luckily, that wasn't the case.

The filming itself wasn't what I imagined. It lasted over a period of a week, with Friday and Saturday constituting the main days. There was a lot of waiting around. The documentary itself is only 18 minutes long, and we were probably being filmed for a total of around 4 hours, while being on set for maybe around 24 hours in total. That's 20 hours of nothing... Especially on the Saturday, when I was at the venue for over 12 hours plus travelling to and from South London, it did feel like a marathon. However, seeing the final result has made it all worth it.

The documentary itself includes my own personal story of experiencing homophobia in the game and also follows LGBT team London Titans, who I joined up with on Saturday to play in a 5-a-side game against a generic "lads" team. Charlie, Jasper, Callum and Joe were my teammates for the day and all of them were absolutely awesome people. Oddly, I had my own preconceptions about what they would be like - for certain attitudes are engrained into your psyche regardless of your own sexuality - but they were just footballers. And very good ones at that. The 5-a-side game lasted about an hour, and it was extremely competitive. The "lads" team had confessed they were desperate not to lose, as if losing to a "gay team" would hurt their egos. And I think we felt like we were representing gay footballers on the whole and was desperate to not let them down. We lost in the end by a couple of goals but it was a close fought game. It was also close to 30 degrees, so by the end I was absolutely ruined, and I was only in goal! I can't imagine how the others felt...

It was also quite amusing to film out on the streets in Bedford. Walking down the street being followed by a film crew made me feel important and we got a few comments from people. It was pretty cool, I have to say!

However, the best thing to come out of all of this is one comment from a complete stranger on Twitter who private messaged me, telling me he was going to try and join a team this season. He had been afraid to do so, for the same reasons all of us gay footballers are, in fear of having to hide themselves and/or face abuse. To hear that this 18-minute documentary has helped him find the confidence to play football again is the best thing in the whole world to hear. I'm not afraid to admit that it brought a tear to my eye and I am SO PROUD of everyone involved in the documentary who helped make a difference. To hear we actually changed someone's life for the better is humbling.


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You can watch the documentary here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0590b6d/we-are-gay-and-we-love-football-too?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_radio_1&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=radio_and_music