Gareth Thomas' new autobiography 'Proud' reveals how he suffered gay taunts at the hands of rugby league fans upon coming out.
Thomas, who was playing for the Wrexham based League side, Crusaders, came out in 2009. The following year, he experienced 'the manifestation of his worst nightmare' in a game at Castleford.
Thomas writes
This wasn’t ‘banter’. It wasn’t the ranting of an isolated homophobe. It was an abusive chant taken up by a couple of hundred people in a crowd of just under 6,000, who stood on the steeply banked terraces and had decided to belittle me and everything I stood for.
Castleford claimed that the chants were isolated incidents which were drowned ont by public service announcents. Thomas dismisses this as rubbish. He is still riven with fury over the episode, saying that he 'only has to close his eyes to recall the braying ignorance of those cowards.'
