He was the first in the world, and still one of the only Rugby League players to come out publically as gay.
His decision helped change the culture around men’s sport, but Ian Roberts finds it hard to call himself a game changer. “I didn’t really have to do anything except be myself,” he tells Insight’s Jenny Brockie this week.
Ian downplays his coming out, calling his sexuality “the worst kept secret in rugby league.” But in 1995, he became the very first high-profile Australian sports person to do so.
Despite being told by his coach that it wouldn’t be accepted, and his fears that his personal and professional lives couldn’t possibly mix, Ian decided to be open about his orientation after getting to know a child with HIV.
“I saw the discrimination and the prejudice, the exclusion that that young boy had to go through,” Roberts says. “It kind of made me feel that I was just being really fake.”
Ian Roberts, on Insight Source: Insight
Ian thought he would open the door for other athletes to come out – but he was surprised when, decades later, the game hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected.
“I thought there would be a trickle on effect … I wouldn’t have thought, 20 years down the line, that only one other player had come out at the end of his career,” he says. “We like to think things have changed, but they haven’t really.”
With no one else speaking out, Ian remained the poster boy for LGBT+ sportspeople. He tells Insight how being visible and real about his sexuality has become a responsibility, which sometimes weighs heavily.
“It’s something that you have to do … for whatever reason, I’m in this situation now.”
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