SAM STANLEY, a 23-year-old rugby union centre who played for England Sevens last season, has become the nation’s first international player to reveal publicly that he is gay.
He said that at one point he considered taking his own life because of his fears that his sexuality conflicted with his career as “a macho rugby player”. He had also gone to great pains to cover up his relationship with Laurence, his partner of five years.
Stanley was born in Essex to an English mother and a father of Samoan descent. His brother, Michael, is in the Samoa squad for the World Cup. His uncle is Joe Stanley, the New Zealand centre who was part of the All Blacks team that won the 1987 World Cup.
Stanley said he had been inspired by Gareth Thomas, the former Wales rugby union captain who revealed he was gay towards the end of his career in 2009.
“I was 10 or 11 when I realised I was different to my friends,” Stanley said. “I didn’t want to accept it, I felt that being different wasn’t right. I had a girlfriend because everyone had one and I was thinking that, like some people say, maybe it is just a phase.”
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At his low point he considered killing himself. “I was standing on a bridge about four or five years ago, overlooking a motorway in Essex. It was as if I was thinking that I could get rid of the pain in one go,” he said.
“You are so worried about what people will think and I thought I couldn’t be a macho rugby player the way I was, and there was nothing else I wanted to do with my life.”
He wove a web of secrecy. In the home he shared with Laurence, they made up a spare bed “just in case the lads popped round” and claimed that Laurence was his cousin. “Some of the rugby guys must have wondered why I spent so much of my time with this cousin.”
He has already come out to those around him and said he had been delighted by the warmth of the reaction from the rugby world, including England squad players he knew from his years in the Saracens academy, and especially from Remi, his former girlfriend.
He also thanked Ben Cohen, who won the World Cup with England in 2003, for advice. Cohen’s StandUp Foundation campaigns against bullying in all its forms. “Ben is a great person to talk to,” Stanley says.
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Thomas, who was married, also contemplated taking his own life before he came out. The following year he was voted the most influential gay person in Britain and received Stonewall’s “hero of the year” award.
Two weeks ago Keegan Hirst, of Batley Bulldogs rugby league club, became the only other professional player to come out. Nigel Owens, a leading rugby union referee, has also declared that he is gay.