Mind Games by Neville Southall

Author:Neville Southall [Southall, Neville]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-14T11:38:03+00:00

For any player who might be considering being openly gay, I think the first issue is one of control. It’s about giving a player the power to come out on their own terms, and in exactly the manner that makes them feel most comfortable. If you’re aware, for example, that there’s a tabloid media that might delight in running the story that you’re gay, and either splash it on their front page or give you forty-eight hours’ warning that they’re going to splash it, that takes all control away from you. And it’s going to make you feel uncomfortable about how you might expect to be treated by that self-same media afterwards. Serious questions also need to be asked about whether the Football Association has gone far enough in its preparations. I’ve never seen anyone from the FA go onto Sky Sports or BBC Sport and detail exactly what the protocol is for when a player does come out. But that should have happened. It should be public knowledge.

The FA could state beyond any doubt that they would be fully behind any player who came out. They could stipulate that there would be added security around the player for a period of time, to offer protection in case of any unacceptable backlash or media intrusion. It shouldn’t be needed, but let’s plan for the worst. They could name a few experts in the field of counselling who would immediately be made available to the player; this person will help the individual, this person will support the family, this person will work with individuals within the club. They could nominate someone to go into the player’s club on a full-time basis to act as a go-between for player and governing body to ensure that everything they need to feel comfortable is taken care of and arrange anything that might be lacking.

They could also spell out the disciplinary action that would be taken against any incidents of homophobic abuse and the extra support that would be given to the player in such circumstances: fining clubs significant amounts of money for any abuse that came from the stands, punishing players with lengthy bans if they were proven to have directed abuse at their fellow professionals and docking their clubs points if behaviour didn’t improve. The money from fines would be given to LGBTQ+ charities.

If the FA laid all of that out on national TV and in the press, it would confirm that they had proactively done everything in their power and it would send a message to all players that the national governing body had their backs. They would also be proactively casting those who abused a player as pariahs who wouldn’t be welcome at the ground or club ever again. Those abusive knobheads couldn’t say that they hadn’t been warned.

Then the FA should initiate discussions with a number of gay fan groups and openly gay participants in other sports on the issues they encountered and feared before coming out, because only by

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