As I write these words, Sunderland are days away from another trip to Wembley for Play-Off Final reckoning. By Saturday evening, we could have returned to both second-tier football and the upward trajectory our storied club deserves. And yet – at this moment in time – this week has already had its football feelgood story for me. The whole season has, in fact.
Blackpool’s Jake Daniels has come out as gay and I can’t wipe the grin off my face. Plenty of people will say ‘it shouldn’t be news’, and they’re right – but only if they mean we should have dozens of happily out footballers already and Jake’s story shouldn’t be making the headline splashes it inevitably has. It would be nice if this stuff didn’t matter, but it does. A few rainbow laces each year doesn’t count as proper inclusivity, I’m afraid.
I’ve supported Sunderland since I was knee-high and yet I’ve never exactly been ‘out’ while at a game. That’s not because there’s been OTT homophobic abuse swirling around me every week, but because English football in general traditionally hasn’t bred a friendly enough atmosphere for anyone other than white, male and straight. Things have come on leaps on bounds in every regard, but we’re still not there yet. Such fanfare around 17-year-old Jake publicly declaring what ought to be an inconsequential fact proves there’s still plenty work to do.
There might be mates of mine reading this who’ve not known I’m gay until now. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that being at a game, or sat watching one in the pub, has never felt conducive to a coming out chat. I’ve always felt the need to separate these two areas of my life, an implicit pressure on me that I somehow can’t be both queer and a football fanatic all at once.
If you’re sat thinking I’m daft – worrying about a problem that isn’t there – then stick ‘Section 28’ into a search engine and educate yourself on yet another strand of Thatcher-era cruelty many of us grew up under. I’m in my mid-30s and I’d wager there’s a good handful of people like me in every SAFC crowd who feel the same. It’s perhaps no coincidence it’s taken a young teenager to make a step that no professional player in the generation above him – who therefore hit adolescence in the grip of an especially mean Tory law – has felt able to do.
A world obsessed with the WAG culture – the coverage of ‘Wagatha Christie’, the bizarre and ultimately unimportant feud between Rebekah Vardy and Colleen Rooney, proves we still are – can’t also claim that a footballer’s sexuality is irrelevant without being inherently homophobic, however unintentional that may be. If there must be an interest in the partners or public lives of footballers, it shouldn’t be gender specific.
Women’s football is significantly more inclusive, with plenty of out players. That’s perhaps because it’s started with a cleaner slate and isn’t steeped in anywhere near as much tradition – nor is it dragged down by any notion of forced masculinity. Ultimately, the lack of out gay footballers in the men’s game is quite simply embarrassing and it should be an uncomfortable truth for us all, not just those who identify as anything other than straight.
Which is why this week’s news has made me so happy. I sincerely hope Jake is the first of many, and that this is a truly landmark week in modern British football. Whatever happens to Sunderland this Saturday, this has been a significant week for the sport we love. And thanks to Jake, I’ll be stood cheering the Lads on at Wembley, just a bit more comfortable about who I am and how I fit.
