How Coming Out Ruined Donal óg Cusack’s Mom’s Life

After coming out in his autobiography, Irish hurler Donal óg Cusack now says the backlash from his revelation isn’t just affecting him, it’s affecting mama!

The mother of hurling star Donal Og Cusack has been forced to stop attending his games because of the stress of hearing homophobic abuse shouted at him from the terraces.

The Cork player has revealed that heckling bigots have ruined match days for his mother, who now stays at home.

[…] His account of the anti-gay abuse directed at him is the latest revelation to come from his forthcoming autobiography, Come What May. He is due to talk about the book on the Late Late Show on Friday.

Donal Og recalled the moment he was waiting to take a free at a championship game in Semple Stadium, when a man started up a hate-filled chant on a megaphone.

Team-mate Diarmuid O’Sullivan later asked guards to throw the culprit out and Denis Walsh wrote him a letter about it.

“And that’s what gets to you,” Donal Og said. “Other people. I leaned over the free and took it and struck it well. I have trained for this, but my father is in the back of my mind.

“Yerra though, he’s tough, he’ll get through it.”

But, he then revealed: “My mother doesn’t go to games anymore. The stress is too much.

“My sister Treasa has been deeply upset a few times by what she has heard.

“I hate what it does to those around me, especially when it doesn’t hurt me at all.”

But the biggest disappointment with d-bags who feel the need to attack sports heroes (or anyone, for that matter) over their sexuality? THEY AREN’T EVEN ORIGINAL. C’mon, bigots. If you’re going to throw around curse words, at least devise your own script.

Despite the abuse he has had to endure, he said he got the feeling that “something good” should come of it. He said he accepted it was “human nature” and was not going to change.

He developed a mental strategy for dealing with it — “trigger points” so that when he hears abuse positive thoughts come into his head instead.

“Mostly it’s just the same f***ing thing,” he said. “The fellas that want to hurt you will go for the personal stuff. Calling you queer, ingenious stuff like that.

Gay slurs have driven my mother away from games, says Donal Og [Herald]