Ian Roberts admits he didn’t think he’d live to see the day a gay couple would be able to marry in Australia.
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“It still spins me out,” the former NRL player reflected one week after same-sex couples were officially able to tie the knot.
“If you had asked me 10 years ago whether there would be gay marriage in my lifetime, I would have said it was impossible.”
And indeed it seems a lifetime ago this towering, but gently spoken giant of a man was revered as one of the fiercest forwards in rugby league.
The man who made such an indelible mark on the field also blazed a trail off it when he announced he was gay at the height of his playing career in the mid-1990s.
The public admission of “the game’s worst-kept secret” was always going to come at a cost.
It’s a courageous journey the 52-year-old will share with the Border community as a guest speaker for the 2018 Albury-Wodonga Winter Solstice event on June 21.
“In a way rugby league was always my buffer, the defence I could hide behind,” he says.
“A lot of people couldn’t reconcile the two when I came out – it was such a masculine, physical and even violent sport. It challenged every stereotype.”
Naturally, Roberts became an easy target for the haters; the homophobes salivating over the chance to pounce on such a high-profile figure.
“I certainly had moments of being down and experiencing the anxiety of confronting people’s expectations,” he says.
“There were so many people willing to voice their opinions openly, willing to attack yet they were not willing to talk about how we could create a community where we could accept people’s differences.”
While Roberts “was never uncomfortable with my sexuality’, that didn’t mean family, team-mates and friends were comfortable.
“My family were working-class English – they were homophobic and racist.
“They were aware I was not ‘the norm’ and it was often spoken about in very negative terms.”
Roberts has a vivid memory of the day he became aware he was gay.
He wasn’t even aware of the terminology.
“I was six or seven years old and we were watching a documentary on television where two men were kissing,” he recalls.
“I connected with them.
“My father turned around and said, ‘They make my f***ing skin creep.”
But as fate would have it, Roberts was to show a natural talent for one of the world’s most macho sports.
He came upon it almost by accident, knocking about with the neighbourhood kids from the age of five – “it was just what kids did then”.
The man who humbly describes himself as a “better than average player” was to become a NSW State of Origin and Australian international representative forward and in 2005 was named one of the 25 greatest ever NSW players.
The accolades extolling his prowess and his fierceness are well documented.
Yet, quite frankly, Roberts can’t say for sure that he still actually likes football.
“I don't mind seeing the game but I’m not in love with it,” he says.
“If Ian had done what he wanted to do when he left school he would have done something with animal protection ...”
And yet it was when he left the game that defined him that Roberts hit his lowest point.
“I had broken up from a long-term relationship, I’d retired and my own self-worth was …. well, I was not in a good place,” he says.
“I felt very much alone and I know this may sound crazy but I bought two cats – Bill and Ben.
“They changed my life.”
The deep empathy Roberts feels – and has spoken about publicly – for the vulnerable, the bullied and the despairing is as heart-felt as it is horrifying.
Because he has regrets – of HIV-positive friends who let themselves slip away and young people whose stories “were all too familiar to me”.
“On reflection I know I could have done more,” he says.
The suicide of Tyrone Unsworth, a 13-year-old boy bullied over his sexuality, struck a brutal chord.
“As a gay man, I’m so tired of hearing this story,” he says sadly.
“It’s why I know I have a responsibility to keep this conversation going, to be involved and be prepared to have an opinion.”
Spend just a short time talking with Roberts and it’s clear his iconic status sits uncomfortably with him.
He alludes to the “weary weight” that comes with having a public profile.
At the same time, he knows it is through his actions that positive change can be enacted.
“One of the strongest statements I can make is to just hold my partner Dan’s hand in public,” he says.
Roberts’ fervent hope is that younger generations will never have to experience the gruelling pain of his own coming of age.
His jubilation at Australia’s (albeit “embarassingly late”) vote for same-sex marriage is tempered by the “awful anxiety created by the plebiscite”.
But it was the unexpected words of his father before he died that “beautifully encapsulates my journey”.
“My mother, sister and partner were having a discussion about same-sex marriage while my father was reading his paper,” Roberts says.
“My father put the paper down and said, ‘Why shouldn’t you be able to marry the person you love?’”.
Next month Roberts will attend his first same-sex marriage of a long-time friend and former partner.
“I’d make a great flower girl,” he laughs.
If you had asked me 10 years ago whether there would be gay marriage in my lifetime, I would have said it was impossible.
- Ian Roberts
For more information regarding this year’s event, visit The Winter Solstice