The return of Gladiators last weekend brought an old issue back into focus for me: homosexuality in football.  Why, you may ask?  Well, Gladiators has many connections to both the football community and to the gay community.  What connections, you may also ask?

- The original UK Gladiators was hosted by former footballer John Fashanu.  His brother Justin Fashanu, who also played, was the first openly gay footballer.  Justin was ostracised by the footballing community and by his brother after coming out, and sadly he committed suicide in 1998.

- The hosts of the new UK Gladiators are Kirsty Gallacher and Ian Wright.  Gallacher is of course a former presenter for Sky Sports News, while Wright has vague connections to football of some sort.

- The original US version of Gladiators suffered a number of scandals; two of its male performers were exposed as having worked in the gay porn industry and as strippers.

- Gladiators is rather homo-erotic.  Don’t believe me?  Read an excerpt from this blog:

"How could you possibly have been expected to stay heterosexual in the presence of a show that featured hot musclemen in spandex, running around and beating each other with pillow sticks?"

- A study carried out in 1999 revealed that the success of Gladiators had led to a 34% increase in the number of Premiership footballers waxing their chests.  As an interesting aside, David Beckham alone has caused a further 127% increase.

Back to football - A number of players, including John O’Shea, Graeme Le Saux, former Gooners Fredrik Ljungberg, Sol Campbell and Cashley Cole have been dogged by rumours about their sexuality throughout their careers, despite all five repeatedly stressing their heterosexuality.  This has been particularly apparent in the case of Cashley, who recently affirmed his un-gayness by cheating on his wife Cheryl with an absolute moonpig.  Former Chelsea full-back Le Saux was regularly subjected to homophobic abuse during games, and was taunted about his supposed homosexuality by fellow player Robbie Fowler.  In Fowler's defence, he looks like my brother, and my brother is a good guy.

Since then measures have been taken to stamp out homophobia in football, such as the FA adopting a scheme proposed by the Gay Football Supporters Network to make homophobic chanting at games a specific offence; this came into effect for the 07/08 season.  However, to date Justin Fashanu remains the only gay footballer to openly express his homosexuality.

So why is football so hostile to the gays?  Is it a collective sense of denial?  There must surely be a large number of gay football fans – I imagine it holds a strong appeal.  Speaking as a breeder, I know that if there was a sport where two teams of women ran around a field in shorts, grabbing each other, getting sweaty, jumping around together and occasionally hugging and kissing, I would definately watch it.  Anyway, perhaps if the homophobic elements within football were to get in touch with their feminine side, they might find acceptance of their inner gay and enable the healing process to begin.

A gay friend of mine loves his football.  The poor bastard; he supports Newcastle United.  When I put forward my accepting-the-inner-gay suggestion, he said:

“Shut the fuck up Van Smeiter.  Don’t be so gay.”

So there you have it.  There is much work to be done.