What really hurt was not being picked by his coach.
“It became awkward around some of the guys in the club,” Bastyovanszky, a 35-year-old office worker in Sydney, told Reuters of his teenage playing days in British Colombia.
“They were playing me less and less. I just didn’t fit in.”
Twice World Cup winners Australia and Canada may be poles apart in world rugby, but homophobia in the sheds spans borders, Bastyovanszky found after he moved to Sydney over a decade ago.
Australia’s professional sports have long preached tolerance and inclusion, with the major leagues all adopting robust anti-racial vilification regimes.
Efforts to stamp out homophobia in the nation’s change-rooms have been slower off the mark, but the major sports bodies including soccer, cricket, Australian Rules football, rugby union and rugby league signed a landmark agreement in April to commit to a timeline for implementing an inclusion policy.
Cosmopolitan harbour city Sydney, venue of the world famous Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, will host the Bingham Cup, the world cup of gay rugby union, in August.
A number of high profile athletes, including former Wallabies greats Nick Farr-Jones and John Eales have thrown their weight behind the tournament which organisers hope will make sports clubs more accommodating environments.
“It’s always disappointing to hear stories of people who don’t play sports because they fear discrimination,” former World Cup-winning captain Eales said in a statement emailed to Reuters on Thursday.
“Sports can and must lead society and be welcoming for everyone. Thankfully many people seem to agree with this view, and have voiced this strongly during discussions and debates around the high-profile gay athletes in the United States bravely sharing their stories.”
TRAILBLAZERS
National Basketball Association player Jason Collins made a splash last year as the first gay man to come out in a major North American sports league.
Defensive end Michael Sam of the University of Missouri became the first openly gay player to be selected in a National Football League Draft when he was taken in the seventh round by the St. Louis Rams in May.
The players have been hailed as trailblazers, but not everyone shares the optimism that their profiles will tear down long-entrenched barriers.
Similar optimism abounded in Australia when former rugby league international Ian Roberts came out in the mid-1990s, but nearly 20 years on, none of the more-than-1,000 players in the nation’s top-flight leagues are publicly known as gay.
“We do know of and hear stories of international players who are gay,” said Bastyovanszky, who plays with the Sydney Convicts, three-times Bingham Cup champions.
“(Roberts) came out and nobody followed him. The concern is that there are no more players following.”
The problem is not the level of tolerance in greater society, says Bastyovanszky. The playing field is also more hospitable place for gay athletes.
“In the league that we play in, the teams have been extraordinarily good about it, we haven’t had any derogatory comments being made,” he said.
“The year before we had one or two instances where people were called ‘faggot’, but the players never really took cheap shots.
“The homophobia comes from those who are closer to the individual, it’s those guys who they’d shower with and share a locker with.”
In what organisers have called a first in world rugby, the Convicts will play a curtain-raising match against Macquarie University before Sydney-based Super Rugby team, the New South Wales Waratahs, host a championship match against New Zealand’s Highlanders on Sunday.
“We’re referring to it as the ‘skirt-raiser’,” Bastyovanszky said. “I’d be extraordinarily disappointed if I wasn’t selected.”
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Rugby - Australia struggling to stamp out sports club homophobia
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