Not the Alien Life Form ALF from the 1980s sitcom. The 6’3″ 225 pound Welsh national rugby team star, Gareth Thomas. Alf is the nickname given to him by a friend at age 14 that stuck.
Some months ago he gained the distinction of becoming the first, and only, gay man in a major team sport who’s out of the closet.
This week Gary Smith has a 7,000+ word profile of him in Sports Illustrated. The moment:
“Look, it’s one of two things,” said Johnno [link]. “Do you want me to make it easier on you, Alf? Do you want me to say it for you?”
Alf nodded. “Either you cheated on her with another woman, which I don’t think you have….”
Silence.
“Does it have something to do with your sexuality, mate?”
Tears filled Alf’s eyes. “You knew all the time,” he said.
“So … you’re still Alf, right? We love you. This doesn’t change anything about you as a person or how the boys feel about you…. But you’ll need support, mate. You can’t hold this alone. I’m going to speak to a few of the boys. They need to know.”
Why Rugby?
The brotherhood. That’s what magnetized Alf to rugby, what he felt in the marrow of his oft-broken bones. No other sport on earth demanded that a man lay his unprotected body on the line so relentlessly for his mates. Rugby, like the NFL, was a weekly car wreck, only its season lasted twice as long, and its games, with no stoppages for gathering one’s breath or wits or heart, were two 40-minute streams of running and colliding that ground down every man, flushed his vulnerability from its hideaways and compelled even the strongest player to realize how much he needed the weakest. No other sport matched rugby’s fervor for bonding; no other’s coaches directed their buses to the nearest pub for team sing-alongs, drink-alongs and the occasional chair-flying free-for-alls after away games, or ordered their players to report for unscheduled conditioning sessions only to stab a finger at the beer cases stacked in the corner and cry, “We’re not leaving till the last beer’s done, boys!” … all in the name of forging brotherhood.
The reaction:
His cellphone blazed with congratulatory texts from old teammates. His current mates rejoiced that Alf’s preferences finally were fodder. They teased him about the pink jerseys that Cardiff wore against Toulouse: “Oh, they knew you were coming out today, Alf?” They pointed to the music video on the team bus—Freddie Mercury of Queen, dressed as a miniskirted maid, vacuuming a house and singing I Want to Break Free—and hooted, “Oh, look, Alf’s on the telly!” Coach David Young growled, “C’mon, boys, you’re playing like a bunch of fairies!” and started to cringe at his word choice, only to see Alf giggling hardest of all. Now Alf could take the mick on his hotel roommates, claiming that Gareth Cooper had spent the whole night in Toulouse sleeping with one eye open and his back to the wall.
“We probably love him even more now because of how hard we know it’s been for him,” says Lee Byrne, a former national teammate.
“For me, he was the most ungay person who ever was,” says Trevor Brennan, a former Toulouse teammate. “Our coach would point to him and say, ‘There’s an example of a real man.’ I don’t make gay jokes anymore since I found out about Alf.”
Via Hang Up and Listen, where they wonder “whether it would help if leagues were to come out and show some willingness to be more accepting.” When an American player does come out, they agree, “it happens gradually… then suddenly.” Once one brave sportsman does it, a spate of others who come out.
They also point to Ben Yagoda’s Slate paean to Gary Smith, “Smith is not only the best sportswriter in America, he’s the best magazine writer in America.”
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