Months after making AFL history as the first openly queer player in the men’s league, Mitch Brown has opened up about the deep‑rooted “cultural problem” still plaguing the sport.
Mitch, who played for the West Coast Eagles before his retirement in 2016, opened up about his bisexuality in a landmark interview last August.
In the time since, he’s become a key voice on issues of homophobia within AFL and sport more broadly, and is set to further spotlight his pride with his Mardi Gras debut as a co-host of ABC’s coverage of the Sydney parade this weekend.
Reflecting on his coming out journey so far, Mitch told PEDESTRIAN.TV he was inspired to share his story as a way of combatting the at-times “unsafe” space of professional sport.
“There’s a cultural problem within the men’s AFL competition, because within 130 years or more, for no one to publicly come out and speak — that’s a cultural problem,” Mitch told us.
Mitch said the problem begins early on in the “junior pathways” of the AFL, which might dissuade queer players from pursuing the sport professionally and result in fewer gay athletes in the top-tier league.
“The other layer is the junior pathways [and] the amount of queer players or queer people that have just stopped playing sports and playing the game they love because it became too unsafe,” Mitch said.
“Maybe there are no queer players because they don’t even make it to the point where they can get drafted because it’s too unsafe in our community and young people’s pathways. That’s an issue as well.”
Though he took issue with the pathways that might exclude queer athletes, Mitch said his coming out story has had a positive impact on players on the other end of the spectrum — like those who quit the sport as teens but returned after his coming out.
“The amount of grown men that have come up to me and said, ‘thank you for what you’ve done, I’ve after all these years, I’ve finally felt okay to reconnect with football again because this is the game that I love so much, but I had to stop playing because it was unsafe when I was in my teenage years’,” Mitch recalled.
“That’s not just one or two, that’s hundreds of grown men that have shared that experience with me.”
Understandably, being thrust into the spotlight by sharing an extremely personal journey — and being the first of his cohort to do so — can bring a certain weight of responsibility. But Mitch pushed back against the idea that his coming out was a burden.
“I remember the former CEO of the AFL Gillon McLachlan — and he’s not the only one — talking about this sense of burden for the first person to come out publicly,” Mitch said.
“So I did think about that [before coming out] and go, ‘No, I don’t think it’s going to be a burden, it’s a privilege’.”
Mitch will continue his newfound advocacy in the queer community as an ABC Mardi Gras co-host alongside the likes of Courtney Act, Mon Schafter and Brooke Blurton.
“I’m going to show up as just myself, because if I can’t do that, then what’s the point of Mardi Gras?” Mitch teased.
You can catch Mitch and all those other icons when ABC’s Mardi Gras coverage kicks off on Saturday at 7:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Lead image: Getty Images
