I PETER Ross do solemnly pledge that in this article about Scotland's only gay football team I will avoid any and all cheap references to balls, communal baths and playing for the other side. I swear this on my copy of the 1978 Roy Of The Rovers annual and a foxed paperback of Myra Breckinridge.
The gay football team in question are HotScots FC. They have played only three matches so far, but managed to beat an English side, the London Leftfooters, and will represent Scotland in the gay world cup this August. Roll over James McFadden and tel
l Smeato the news, the HotScots are national heroes in the making.
I meet them in Edinburgh. It's wild outside, the sort of night when the wind seems to shove past as if late for an appointment. Arthur's Seat is a dark mass in silhouette, the low moon and storm-tossed clouds creating a flickering glow behind the hill. On the grass of The Meadows, crocuses poke up like periscopes. One of the prejudices against gay men playing football is that they are too weedy for such an aggressive sport, but anyone who turns out to train in this weather cannot be a shrinking violet.
The Meadows has been one of Edinburgh's most popular parks since the mid-18th century. Both Hearts and Hibs played their first games here, and the first derby between the two took place in the park on Christmas Day, 1875. As a crucible of footballing history, this place has form.
HotScots train on Thursday nights and play on Sundays, sometimes against regular Scottish teams, sometimes taking on squads from the gay league in England. Within the team, which also welcomes straight players, there's a debate about whether it is best to concentrate on playing gay sides, or whether bigotry is countered more effectively by taking on teams that are not defined by the sexuality of the players.
Tonight they are working on fitness and ball skills such as shooting and accurate passing, trying to correct weaknesses before the weekend's match; none of the HotScots are good with their head.
They are, however, well named. As physical types they run more to Beckham than Rooney, although one Irish player, 27-year-old Seamus Kealey, has a dark, brooding Roy Keane thing going on.
The team was formed in February 2007 by Kev Rowe, a charity fundraiser and Aston Villa fan, after moving to Edinburgh from Leeds. He had played for a gay team, the Yorkshire Terriers, and decided Scotland could do with something similar, so set about recruiting players through the pink press. He also contacted Scotland's gay rugby club, the Caledonian Thebans, and from there recruited JP Clarke, a 29-year-old primary school and PE teacher who has become the HotScots' star striker.
"I left the rugby team straight away because football is my passion," says Clarke. "For me, this is a social thing. It's easy for me to talk to people on the team about my life, to say: 'I was out last night with my partner.' You wouldn't have that with a regular team. Many people have a funny idea about what it means to be gay. They don't realise we can play sport."
Many straight men will suffer from wives and girlfriends who cannot understand their love of the beautiful game, and there's something similar within gay culture, in which football remains a minority interest. It's rare to find a gay bar showing football, possibly because the sport is seen as being macho, even homophobic. Take, for instance, the Hearts terrace chant, 'All the Hibees are gay' sung to the tune of 'Seven Nation Army'. You aren't going to find it pleasant at games if thousands of people use your sexuality as a term of abuse.
HotScots FC provides a shelter from all that. "We have players who played for regular teams and they found it isolating being the only gay player on that team," says Rowe. "One of our players was spotted in a gay bar and later was asked outright in the changing room by the teammate that had seen him whether he was gay. He actually ended up denying it because he was put right on the spot. And he not only felt ashamed of that, he also thought: 'What business is it of yours to ask me?' That led to him leaving that team and joining us."
If it's hard for a man to come out to his pub team, imagine how much more difficult it must be if you are a top player in the closet. Out of the 5,000 professional footballers in the UK, none are openly gay. Justin Fashanu, who played for Nottingham Forest and Hearts, remains the only pro to have come out, and given that he committed suicide in 1998 his example cannot inspire confidence in other gay players who might consider going public.
That said, attitudes have changed a lot in 10 years. Kev Rowe says that if a top player came out now, they would encounter hostility from the terraces at first, but would eventually be accepted, especially if they were scoring goals, and would certainly blaze a trail for gay players, just as Viv Anderson and John Barnes did for a generation of black players. Rowe also believes that whoever came out first would be in line for lucrative sponsorship deals.
It's a tantalising vision of the future. Professional football, with its constant whirl of scandals, crises, rivalries and heartaches, is already a global circus. Imagine how much more entertaining it would be with open homosexuality thrown in the mix. Imagine, even, if two players on rival teams became star-cross'd lovers. We're talking Romeo And Juliet meets Match Of The Day.
In the meantime, Kev Rowe has plans for Scotland. It will probably not be long before there is a gay team in Glasgow, squads are starting in Aberdeen and Dundee, and the formation of a Scottish league is probably only a couple of years away. Just one last question then: why on earth did he call his team HotScots FC?
"Naff as it may be, it stuck in my head," Rowe laughs. "The best name I ever heard, though, was a team in Liverpool called Fairies Cross The Mersey."
