An Australian rugby coach has apologized to the homophobic players on his roster after a team Pride promo didn’t go as planned.
Coach Des Hasler arranged for his Manly Warringah Sea Eagles to don uniforms featuring rainbow accents for a game on Thursday. Fun, right? Except that seven players have said will not be wearing the gear, or playing in the game, citing religious and cultural objections.
They’re especially upset that the team wasn’t consulted ahead of time, but whatever point they may have on that issue is difficult to empathize with.
Hasler apologized to players Josh Aloiai, Jason Saab, Christian Tuipulotu, Josh Schuster, Haumole Olakau’atu, Tolu Koula, and Toafofoa Sipley for the “poor execution” of the Pride jerseys, calling it a “significant mistake.”
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Our thoughts and prayers go out to these seven players who’ve no doubt suffered quite the ordeal. But perhaps the apology should actually go to LGBTQ athletes and fans who for too long have been fearful of expressing themselves because of, well, exactly this kind of nonsense.
Coach Hasler didn’t quite address that group directly, but he did explain why he initially decided to run with the promo.
“The intent of the rainbow application of our jersey was to represent diversity and inclusion for all, utilizing the symbolic colors of Pride to embrace all groups who feel marginalized, face discrimination, and a suppressed share of voice,” he said during a press conference. Unfortunately, those intentions were not realized.
Hasler added: “Sadly, the execution of what was intended to be an extremely important initiative was poor.”
Former Manly player (and current actor) Ian Roberts, who became the first pro rugby league player to come out as gay in 1995, called the fumble “sad and uncomfortable.”
“I can promise you every young kid on the northern beaches [of Sydney] who is dealing with their sexuality would have heard about this,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
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He shared a message for the seven players in a separate column for the paper. “Can you not understand the pain visited upon gay people who, no matter what they do, are disrespected simply for being gay?” he wrote.
Here’s a look at the jerseys the rest of the team will play in this week:
You, Me, Everyone in League.https://t.co/csnxCYOs7h@dynasty_sport #ManlyForever pic.twitter.com/buVY5B8Vgm
— Manly Warringah Sea Eagles (@SeaEagles) July 24, 2022
Attitudes towards LGBTQ inclusion have come a long way in sports, with more and more athletes coming out or showing true allyship in recent years.
Sadly, this will certainly not help the situation.
CatholicXXX
There’s a common theme amongst those that support the pride jerseys and those that don’t. All you have to do it search for their pictures and you will see. It’s like night and day.
The original article also stated that those players that are opposed wearing the jerseys don’t boycott players that beat women. Guess rainbow jerseys is wear they draw the line.
OhPlease
The two are not related, quit playing apples and oranges.
Many people are turned off by gays and they often have valid reasons related to unprofessional treatment or outright sexual harassment by them. Gay men in particular are in fact heavily represented in sexual harassment scenarios and also in child molestation.
Effete gay men also tend to be among the more disruptive employees in a workplace with malicious gossip or fight provocation and unlike others, cough cough, you can’t simply fire them without a federal lawsuit. This is one powerful reason why so many people in the business community are now swinging support to the far right because they incidentally are the ONLY ones standing up to it and demanding legal action. I’ve watched the pendulum swing in both the news industry and in tech over this, f-t-f sexual harassment has also become a tremendous problem.
Instead of making blanket assumptions, maybe someone should ask the players who refuse the jerseys why, since many of us in the LGBT community no longer support the “PRIDE” marketing/social engineering mandates.
Shanester
Wow. “Instead of making blanket assumptions…”. Can’t see the forest from the trees??
Velvetalex
@OhPlease You need to do some research. Because 80% of pedophiles are heterosexual. Nice try.
You have some serious internal homophobia to deal with
Also, nothing you said is empirically verifiable. It’s conjecture you’ve made up. Do better. This is why you’re alone.
canadiankid
So 7 players don’t stand for inclusion? Do they think god will be disappointed in them if they wear a rainbow? Read an ancient history text book! God is made up. It’s sad how christians feel they’re being oppressed simply because they’re not allowed to discriminate against the things their bible says is wrong. Accept everyone, love thy neighbour, let god do the judging. It’s so simple! Yet they make it so complicated and cry foul when all we want is to just love peacefully. It’s so frustrating. What a bunch of imbeciles and screw this club for bowing to these ignorant idiotic players.
thebaddestbabby
I suspect you have been victimized by organized religion, and for that I am sorry. Many churches are cruel to LGBT people, but not all of them. That said, the majority of people in human history have experienced something in life that we may call the divine, to use a catchall term. If you read books on ancient history, you will arrive at the understanding that many other things — time, society, wealth, gender, race, etc. etc. — are, as you say, “made up.” The more scholarly term would be “socially constructed,” but social constructions are not NOT real. They have a very real presence in people’s lives. The hours of the day and the months of the year are social constructions based on observations of the movements of celestial bodies. Do you use time? I do.
RiBrad
The club is still wearing the pride jerseys this week, but the seven players are choosing to sit the game out and not play. I think it is going too far to demand that players wear a jersey which represents something they are uncomfortable with. But the fact they are uncomfortable with such a small act of recognition shows the headwinds that gay people still face from many parts of the community. No such resistance is shown in the Indigenous or Women’s Rounds.
nm4047
I’m not sure the 2 are comparable. Given the majority of these players identify as indigenous from pacific Is.
nobjockey
It’s interesting to note that most of these players are pacific islanders. They have a very high representation in all football codes in Australia. Perhaps sadly, the early missionaries did a bang up job on the people of the pacific islands and many of these people have a rather archaic view of christianity.
Melanesian
Evangelists.
Vince
I didn’t know there was such a vitriolic hatred of gay people till the Israel Folau story. Yes these Islanders are heavily indoctrinated in their loony tunes religion.
Joshooeerr
The double irony here is that those six Pacific Islander players are from cultures that traditionally have very fluid concepts of sexuality and gender, including the quite common phenomenon of the fa’afahine (a non-binary third gender). Their religious objections to homosexuality only came with colonisation by christian missionaries (who, for the record, almost always sexually exploited their converts in one way or another). It’s a shame these guys don’t have more respect for their traditional culture than for the one that pretty much destroyed it.
nm4047
Not quite true, it’s rugby, a game that is widely played among the pacific is region and is the predominant football code that is played in 2 states of Australia
scotty
i would think that they are ALL familiar with a “rugby queen.” you know, sloping forehead, deepset eyes etc etc. trust me…. they ALL know.
Gordon of the Bassets
Yet their playing uniforms are of mixed fibres; they are big on sleeve tattoos; being Islanders they feast on prawns and lobsters. League players have a scandalous history of mutual masturbation whilst one of their number has sex with a woman – the woman being in the room makes their man on man sex somehow Heterosexual”.
Jim
The players should have been consulted and considered before the decision, but shouldn’t be kowtowed to either before or after.
mailliw110
I didn’t know players had a say on what their uniforms look like. I always thought it was an executive and sponsorship kind of decision.
Ronbo
If you are not complete without 100% support from a foreign Rugby team, you must have no significant problems. Congratulations.
In the meantime, please register to vote and vote like you own the place. It’s how a tiny minority of Republicans get most everything that they want while their better half, Democrats, own the Presidency, House and Senate and act totally defenseless.
It’s hard to call them the better half when they seem to consistetly follow the Republican lead. (for-profit healthcare, low taxes on the super-rich, subsidies to oil companies, lack of progress on climate disaster, ending federal welfare, low-pay jobs, DADT, DOMA, outsourcing of jobs via NAFTA, etc….)
I’d prefer to vote for someone I support, rather than another neoliberal just a bit to the left of the biggest knob.
Vince
Going for an independent would be fine in other times when you want to make a statement. Right now society hinges on the edge of full on fascism and loss of all rights aka the Republican Qanon party. I guarantee you that Republicans don’t have this need for the perfect candidates. They’ll fall in line come election time.
Ronbo
Vince, who says we can’t vote for actual FDR-type Democrats instead of Reagan-type Democrats? It sounds as if you’ve resigned yourself to accepting Republican-light Manchen, Cuellar, Feinstein, Murphy, Carper, Coons, etc.
We’ve given this set of old-timey Neoliberals full Democratic control of the Presidency, Senate and the House TWICE recently. They gave us Republican policy!!!
It’s time to vote out these conservates and prepare for the future. Their future has passed, and it isn’t looking good from here. How does it look from over there?
OhPlease
Best idea of all: Quit catering to political mandates to participate in the “virtue signaling” social monitoring and scoring system or the Pride marketing scam, and get your ass back to what you are paid to do. PLAY BALL. This shit has gone wayyyy to far. Athletes should to be compelled for any reason to paticipate in political product placements which is EXACTLY what the “PRIDE” nonsense is all about.
Gianni862
@OhPlease As the person above has said … you definitely have some issues because you really can’t be that ignorant. You somehow feel you can spew this nonsense because you are supposedly a queer … humans of any nationality or religion or sexuality having pride is not political. It’s ignorant or racist bigoted homophobic creatures that take any positivity towards people who have been discriminated and killed for being who they are, and make the positive a negative and twist it into political bull crap. Go take your meds and play with yourself maybe then you will feel more relaxed and comfortable.
SFMike
Leave it cis gender people of faith to be dicks. It makes them feel like they are nobly protolyzing their faith but always ends up exposing them for being the hateful bullies they are.
johncp56
Ye s but if your going to follow your riligons, to hate us follow all the rules go kill yourselves for eating shell fish pig and playing on Sunday funny how they cherry pick the hate
Trev
Unfortunately tonight a sad loss the Manly Sea Eagles lost to to the Sydney Roosters. Yes the 7 players were all Pacific Island background and no doubt as reported in our media apparently a part of the evangelistic church, however that should not be the reason for their refusal to play. However playing for Manly tonight there were several players from PacificIs land background wearing the rainbow colours. I hope they will meet up with Ian Roberts who is a great role model who played for Manly when he came out as gay and discuss this issue as he wants to meet up with them, It has been addressed by the coach and club. The ruling Rugby League body is considering a Pride Game next year. The Aussie Rules (AFL) club management has already had a pride game with no issues. Rather sad that this happened this week when it was also going to be Women In League week.
We will see what happens in the next day or so and what might be for the future.
johncp56
Those homophobic team members can go FYSs