Gay footballers

On Monday 30 January at 9pm, BBC3 will show a documentary by Amal Fashanu, niece of the late Justin Fashanu, called "Britain's Gay Footballers". She is trying to find out why, 25 years later, Justin remains the only professional footballer in Britain ever to come out publicly as gay. 

• Here there is a clip of her interview with publicist, Max Clifford, who has gone on record a number of times as saying he would not advise any player to come out.
• Here is an article, Amal wrote about her feelings and motivations.

In our 2012 edition of Past2Present, we discuss some of the reasons, as we see them, for the disengagement with sport, and football in particular, that LGBT people feel. (See page 5.)

In our 2011 edition, I wrote a piece about an amateur football referee, Norman Redman, and some of the problems he faced in the 1970s and 1980s. (See page 25.)

Sadly, little seems to have changed.