More from ABC
ABC NewsNews HomeSport
NRL Score Centreanalysis
Link copied
If the only time a person can be brave is when they're afraid then Kane Evans will never do a braver thing than open himself to the world and now rugby league must rise to his level of courage.
Evans, a former Roosters, Eels and Warriors prop who played in the NRL between 2014 and 2021, came out as gay on Monday night during an interview with Channel Nine's 100% Footy.
Revealing the secret he's carried inside himself for decades, even as he was doing it, was his "worst nightmare".
"I had three goals in life — to play NRL, to buy my parents a house and then I was going to top myself," Evans said.
"Because I was living in denial. From a young age, I knew that I'm gay but I went down every other avenue to build up these walls to be someone … to escape who I am."
Evans played 131 NRL matches between 2014 and 2021. (Getty Images: Ian Hitchcock)
Evans spoke about the war within himself between who he was and who he pretended to be ever since realising his sexuality at age 15. He spoke about the drugs and alcohol that consumed him and the 135 days and counting he's been sober.
He spoke about sleeping rough, about wanting to die and being afraid to live, and people trying to blackmail him during his playing career when they found out he was gay.
You could feel his memory of the shame and the guilt and the fear, and the promise of hope when he said his chains were broken and that a brighter tomorrow beckoned and that once he told his parents the rest of his life would begin as he became a man reborn at 34 after decades in the dark.
"They know, but I have to tell them. It has to come from my mouth. By the time this airs I will have told them already and I can't wait for that moment," Evans said.
From hiding your sexuality to coming out on the world stage, inclusion advocate Andrew Purchas and hockey player Davis Atkin discuss being a gay man in sport.
"I know some people who have done some gangster things but I feel like this is up there.
"I'm a bit proud of myself and when I look at myself in the mirror now I'm going to smile and not have those bad thoughts."
After his moment of extraordinary courage, Evans is now a pioneer for men's rugby league. He's just the second former male NRL player to publicly identify as gay along with Ian Roberts, who came out 30 years ago.
Welsh dual international Gareth Thomas and English prop Keegan Hirst are the only other professional players to come out and like Roberts, they did so while they were still playing.
It's a certainty there are and have been others and that there will be more in the future. That's where the game — not the NRL, but the wider rugby league community itself — must follow Evans example.
It must have the courage to create an environment where everyone who calls the sport home feels safe to do what Evans could not for so long and be their true selves.
It will be a challenge because, for a game founded on egalitarianism with a strong history in some areas of cultural and racial diversity, rugby league's track record in the LGBTQI+ space is decidedly mixed.
The Manly Pride jersey still looms over rugby league. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)
The rugby league community should be proud to have men like Roberts, Thomas and Hirst in it, as it should be proud of Evans now. Many NRLW players, including some of the game's biggest names and most legendary figures, are openly gay.
But it was just four years ago the game faced a reckoning as a result of the Manly Pride jersey and the subsequent boycott by seven Sea Eagles players who refused to wear it on religious grounds.