Sarah Dingle: It's Saturday night in Sydney, and this rugby team is sinking a few well-earned beers after their game. But this team, the Sydney Convicts, breaks all the rules of macho Aussie sports culture.

This bar is in the heart of Oxford Street, and almost everyone cheering and sculling is gay. Many of these big men sculling beer have joined a gay rugby team to find a safe space.

Richie: I'm Richie, I'm from Northern Ireland, I joined the Convicts because I'm gay.

Perrin: My name's Perrin, I'm from Sydney and I joined the Convicts because I wanted to play in an inclusive rugby team.

Sarah Dingle: Players for the Convicts know they won't cop any homophobia from their teammates, coaches, or fans.

Across Australian sports, homophobia is rife. The first ever international study of homophobia in sport, surveying thousands of athletes and fans, has been released first to Background Briefing.

The founder of the Sydney Convicts, Andrew Purchas:

Andrew Purchas: Unfortunately it paints a pretty grim picture; 80% of gay or lesbian respondents indicated that they had either witnessed or been subjected to homophobic abuse.

Sarah Dingle: Homophobia can be physical:

Ben: When it was my turn he used to like to drop the pad down just before I got to him and just give me a nudge with his elbow to the side of my head.

Sarah Dingle: The study also found that verbal homophobia is ubiquitous, and highly damaging. In Australia 97% of respondents said there were homophobic jokes in their sport, more than any other country.

And it reaches right to the top, even at public functions, as Australia's most capped female cricketer Alex Blackwell knows all too well:

Alex Blackwell: This person's attitude was that the fewer lesbians in the team, that would be a better thing. It was a comment that made me feel like, well, what have I been doing for the last 10 years representing Australia, when the attitude is it would be better if I just leave?

Sarah Dingle: If the situation is bad for women, it appears to be worse for men. In Australia, across all major men's team sports, apparently not a single current player is gay. Players from the lower levels of the codes say that fact is complete fiction.

Brennan Bastyovansky: It's rumoured that there are gay people on both the Waratahs and the Brumbies.

Sarah Dingle: How good are your sources?

Brennan Bastyovansky: Well, some of my friends have dated them.

Sarah Dingle: The same goes for the AFL.

How many national players in the AFL have you heard of who are not straight?

Sean Towner: I've heard of probably 10 to 15 that do identify as gay.

Sarah Dingle: The decision to come out is an individual's choice. But when no one feels safe enough to do so, something is wrong.

La Trobe University sports academic David Lowden:

David Lowden: We have a problem, there's no doubt we have a problem, because we have gay soldiers, we have gay actors, we have openly gay people in so many other walks of life, but for some reason in sport it's just one step too far.

Sarah Dingle: This is not a story about gay hate crimes and visible injuries, this is a story about an insidious culture which clings to sport, and makes queer sportspeople hide in shame and silence.

Today on Background Briefing, you can come out of the closet, but not on the field.

At Kinselas Bar, the newest players for rugby team the Convicts are introducing themselves.

Walter: G'day, I'm Walter, and I joined the Convicts because I like tackle, I mean tackling...

Sarah Dingle: For new recruit Walter, the Convicts offer something he's tried, and failed, to find in other clubs.

Walter: I think as a gay person I find, and as an Asian Australian also, one of the most important things I've found in life is to belong, and to want to be included.

Sarah Dingle: Like many other queer sportspeople past and present, Walter spent years in the closet.

Walter: I used to play for Aussie Rules at La Trobe Uni, and a few of the guys on the bus were talking about how they wanted to join the SRC and they wanted to kick all the gays out, or some crazy thing. And it didn't make me feel very welcome. I wanted to be included with them. So I never told them. I always had to question, you know, do I run like a gay person, do I walk like a gay person, am I dressing like a gay person?

Sarah Dingle: Do you think you were the only gay guy on that team?

Walter: Well, actually I had sexual relations with one of the guys [laughs], so probably not! But he was…who knows, maybe he was just exploring. I don't know if he would class himself as gay.

Sarah Dingle: You never really talked about it?

Walter: Oh no, you had to hide it a million per cent. Even in the La Trobe Uni song there's a reference about poofters.

Sarah Dingle: The president of the La Trobe University Football Club says that's now changed.

It's a chilly Tuesday night and across Melbourne players in the VAFA, the Victorian Amateur Football Association, have turned out to training after work.

In the city's north-west, the captain of Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Football Club or PEGS, Sean Towner, is mulling this weekend's clash against Old Haileybury.

Sean Towner: They're a fairly strong side, they're one of the strong boys from the school side as well.

Sarah Dingle: Sean Towner is the first ever captain in the VAFA to be openly gay. Like Walter, he spent years hiding the truth from his team.

Sean Towner: It's very exhausting. You have to spend a lot of nights alone in your own head-space, which isn't necessarily a great thing.

Sarah Dingle: Sean Towner says he was never on the receiving end of targeted physical or verbal abuse. Instead what made him hide was casual homophobic language, including from friends and teammates, terms like 'faggot'.

Sean Towner: You think, okay, if my friends have that opinion of gay people in a negative context, then I can't come out to them because I don't want our relationship to change because we've got such a good friendship and therefore I've got to stay in the closet, and that goes back into that cycle of being in a bad head-space.

Sarah Dingle: At the same time Sean Towner was trying to hide the truth, so was another VAFA player, Jason Ball.

Jason Ball: When I first figured out I was gay I thought that that was the worst possible thing that I could be, and a lot of that came down to the language that people used.

Sarah Dingle: Jason Ball first played for country football club Yarra Glen at the age of ten. It was the start of a life-long loyalty, but for a whole decade Jason Ball kept his sexuality hidden.

Jason Ball: I figured out I was gay when I was 13 years old. Because I was out, so to speak, in all other areas of my life—at uni and at home and at school and then at work—but the football club felt like the one place that I would never be able to come out. But I loved playing footy and I thought that this would be the only way that I'd be able to keep playing footy.

Sarah Dingle: For Jason, the best way to keep up the pretence was to make sure no one ever got close enough to even ask.

Jason Ball: Lying hadn't gone so well in the past because, you know, when it came to making up stories about girls I had no idea what I was talking about. It kind of just meant that I didn't talk because I didn't want to get asked questions where I had to lie.

Sarah Dingle: The experiences of Jason, Walter and Sean are far too common. The first ever international study into homophobia in sport has been released first to Background Briefing. Almost 10,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual people participated, along with a minority of straights. The study, called Out On The Fields, was organised by a group of experts including Andrew Purchas.

Andrew Purchas: And unfortunately it paints a pretty grim picture. It indicates across the English-speaking countries, which include Australia and New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, Canada and the US that without exception there are significant issues with respect to homophobia in sport.

Sarah Dingle: Close to 3,000 Australians participated in the study. Almost all gay men and lesbians had received verbal slurs like 'faggot' or 'dyke', and many had been bullied over time. And in Australia, for both gay men and lesbians, around one in every six had been physically assaulted.

Overall, these findings on the prevalence of homophobia, are they quite shocking to you?

Andrew Purchas: Yeah, absolutely, and in fact worse than I think we had anticipated.

Sarah Dingle: Just 2% of all Australians said gay, lesbian and bisexual people were completely accepted in sport.

Andrew Purchas: It stems back to one of the overriding issues was people's experience in a PE class. In Australia, 70% of youths under 22 believe that sports are not safe or welcoming for LGB people, lesbian, gay and bisexual people, which is really, really significant. And they cited fears of basically what happened to them during their PE class experiences and also fear of discrimination from coaches and administrators.

Sarah Dingle: For Victorian amateur footballer Jason Ball, hiding the truth as a teenager and as a young man pushed him almost to breaking point.

Jason Ball: I would spend a lot of time at night just crying, that I thought maybe it would be easier if I didn't exist. I thought about taking my own life, I thought that would be easier than having to deal with the embarrassment of anyone finding out.

Sarah Dingle: Verbal homophobia goes right to the top. Here's just one example:

Brian Taylor [archival]: …I'm up here and I've just seen this one from Harry, he's a big poofter, I mean give 'em this one Harry…

Sarah Dingle: Last year, Channel 7 commentator and former Aussie rules player Brian Taylor provoked an outcry when he made this remark about a wave from Geelong player Harry Taylor.

And this was his on-air apology:

Brian Taylor [archival]: …I regret, and I sincerely apologise in regard to Harry Taylor and anyone, and particularly Harry and any of his friends that were offended by my remark, I apologise for...

Sarah Dingle: There's not a single male player, past or present, who's played AFL at a national level, and come out as gay. Unfortunately, the AFL is not unique, the same is true for rugby union, cricket and soccer in Australia.

David Lowden is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University's Centre for Sport and Social Impact.

David Lowden: We have a problem, there's no doubt we have a problem. It's extremely odd. And my research is really looking at why, why is that? And mostly I'm really considering the question of what is it about the way we run sport that perhaps contributes to that.

Sarah Dingle: David Lowden is conducting ground-breaking research into homosexuality and the AFL. Such is the acute sensitivity around his work, he won't answer any questions about it at all.

David Lowden: I can't answer that. I'm sorry, I can't. The reason that I can't answer that is because there is the potential for harm by even talking about it. I actually gave a lot of thought about even conducting this interview because there's a necessity to proceed quietly to gather this research because there are undoubtedly I would say gay footballers.

Sarah Dingle: David Lowden says while the rest of society has moved on, in sport particularly male team sport, there's still a conspiracy of silence.

The sole exception is rugby league legend Ian Roberts, who famously came out as gay in 1995.

David Lowden: We remember that Ian Roberts came out, he's an Adonis, one of the icons of rugby league, he came out. But instead of opening the flood gates, it put another brick in the wall. What happened since is that no one has come out to my knowledge who is openly gay and playing at the time.

Sarah Dingle: For gay rugby player Brennan Bastyovansky, Ian Roberts' name became another homophobic insult.

What were some of the jokes?

Brennan Bastyovansky: Reference to being Ian Roberts. Playing touch, it was like 20 or 30 of us, 'Ian Roberts got the ball,' whenever I got the ball and went for a run.

Sarah Dingle: Brennan Bastyovansky grew up in Canada. In high school, he was a gridiron-playing, self-described top jock.

Brennan Bastyovansky: I think in my late teens I was about 118 kilos. I mean, as a joke, I jumped through a guy's windshield once. I didn't feel a thing. I was playing gridiron, American Football, and I was playing rugby as well. I was known for being violent on the field, so I was a goon.

Sarah Dingle: The violence was partly driven by the fact that in private, Brennan was grappling with his sexuality.

Brennan Bastyovansky: I didn't feel I could turn to my dad. I couldn't turn to my brother. Both of them had told me jokes, gay jokes as well, without knowing that that playful joke was actually making me terrified of telling them and sharing anything with them. I went through a period of self-harm. I've still got scars here and there from that. Thoughts of suicide at one point in late teens.

Sarah Dingle: With the cutting, how did you go with that, given that you're playing sport all the time? Didn't people notice?

Brennan Bastyovansky: I was always covered in scratches. I always had black eyes and injured and whatever.

Sarah Dingle: After he left high school, Brennan Bastyovansky travelled, ending up in Sydney, home of rugby, and Oxford Street. For the first time, Brennan could explore his sexuality. A year and a half later, Brennan made a flying visit home, and finally came out to his family.

Brennan Bastyovansky: My dad was wonderful. I told him at the dinner table. He stood up, he walked over, he gave me a big hug and just told me how much he loved me.

Sarah Dingle: Brennan had also started playing lower grade rugby union for a Sydney club. Although he'd made the difficult decision to come out to his family, he had no intention of coming out in his sport.

Brennan Bastyovansky: At the beginning I was like, they're going to find out I'm gay. It literally was just the weirdest sensation, being deathly afraid that you're not tough enough to be there, and that one little joke or comment about being gay would just absolutely shatter me.

Sarah Dingle: Then, in his fourth year of playing, Brennan was outed to the whole club against his will. Photos of him had shown up in gay media.

Brennan Bastyovansky: Because I was in a magazine, pictures from a party, and then that got sent around and all of a sudden they started the jokes and everything and people started acting weird, because they were sending it around in group e-mails. And then around the club, it became weird as well. I remember we'd shower after a game and everybody would pile in or whatever, and then all of a sudden for the rest of the season I noticed that there was no one showering after the game. I was the only one.

Sarah Dingle: And on the field, Brennan was getting less and less game time.

Brennan Bastyovansky: I was playing the last 10 minutes in fourth grade, so I was going in as a reserve, and it deteriorated that last year. Issues with the coach, I wasn't being social, I wasn't being invited out to stuff anymore, and game time suffered, and that was probably the hardest thing because I was training and training and training.

Sarah Dingle: Brennan tried to ignore what was happening and concentrate on his sport. Then a new coach came in. He noticed Brennan's potential and brought him in from fourth grade to second.

Brennan Bastyovansky: I did really well. I had a bunch of runs with the ball, I was making big tackles. He approached me after the game privately and he asked me, 'Why are you only playing the last 10 minutes of fourth grade?' I was like, 'Well, I've just been relegated and pushed to the side and I don't get included anymore.' It dawned on me after that what some of the reasons might be.

Sarah Dingle: After being isolated and treated badly, Brennan worried that physical abuse could be next.

Brennan Bastyovansky: It's easy to hurt somebody and get away with it in rugby. You can do a bit of a dump tackle, a high tackle, you can stomp them, you get 10 metres. Meanwhile, someone might have a separated shoulder or busted eye.

Sarah Dingle: Brennan left his club, and rugby, for the next four years.

Brennan Bastyovansky: I think I was 29. I was approaching my peak. Another couple of years, another season even, I probably would have played first grade. So I had the opportunity and I squandered it and it was because I knew that I wasn't going to be happy at that club.

Sarah Dingle: For many, the courage it takes to be openly gay in sport is not rewarded. At the Darebin International Sports Centre in Melbourne, I meet Ben.

Ben: It's not an easy thing to do because you don't walk around and say, 'Hi my name is Ben, I'm gay and I come from Williamstown.' It's not part of your intro.

Sarah Dingle: A few years ago at university, Ben joined the rugby team. One night halfway through the season, the core group of around eight players went out drinking. Ben got drunk and told one of his closest friends.

Ben: I said, 'Look, I am gay. I hope that that is not going to cause any issues. What do you think everyone else is going to say?' He said, 'I don't think it's going to cause any issues.' And so we decided in our drunkenness to go back inside and to tell everyobody else.

Sarah Dingle: The players there that night were fine, but that wasn't the whole team.

Ben: There was one particular guy who had obviously…does have a chip on his shoulder about the fact that I was gay and being a part of his rugby team, or, as he saw it, his rugby team. Just 'poof' and 'fag' and that sort of thing, it was nothing very imaginative. It was all pretty stock-standard, under the breath so not too many people could hear usually. It was so I could hear it, of course.

Sarah Dingle: Then the homophobia became physical.

Ben: This particular guy would make sure that he was the one holding the pads and we would have to run through and tackle him in a drill sort of situation. When it was my turn he used to like to drop the pad down just before I got to him and just give me a nudge with his elbow to the side of my head pretty much.

Sarah Dingle: Ben confronted the player about his behaviour, which went nowhere. Then Ben took it to the club.

Ben: They said, look, if it was to escalate any further then they would take it further, but at the time they said, look, just see how you go, we don't want to stir the pot too much.

Sarah Dingle: It didn't escalate, but the verbal and physical abuse kept going for the rest of the season. Ben won't name the club.

One of the experts on the international panel overseeing the just-released Out On The Fields study on homophobia in sport is Victoria University Associate Professor Caroline Symons.

Caroline Symons: I think we've still got a pretty bloke-y culture.

Sarah Dingle: Caroline Symons says we concentrate on a particular male warrior type of sport.

Caroline Symons: Have a look at your media coverage of sport; women still get 10% of press coverage, and 3% of TV coverage.

Sarah Dingle: For us, sport equals men playing as a team, some form of football?

Caroline Symons: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Dingle: Caroline Symons says when it comes to homophobia, for women their challenge is the opposite of men. While we pretend in men's team sport that no one's gay, in women's team sports we assume that most players are lesbians, and that's also portrayed as a bad thing.

Caroline Symons: Strong women that play well, whatever sexuality they are, should be admired and celebrated. But that's not what's happening here, and the lesbian becomes the scapegoat.

Sarah Dingle: There was a key moment when that negative stereotype of the female player was stamped into the Australian consciousness.

Newsreader [archival]: Australian women's cricket has been plunged into turmoil with allegations that sexual preference is a factor in team selection. One of the nation's best players says she was dropped from the Australian line-up because she's married and heterosexual...

Sarah Dingle: In 1994, the Australian women's cricket team were about to tour New Zealand. A number of players including Denise Annetts had been dropped from the tour. But Denise Annetts lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Board, alleging she was dumped because she wasn't a lesbian. Overnight, women's cricket became a national sensation.

Caroline Symons: It was ironic. Women's cricket, the Australian women's cricket team were world champions, had been world champions for a number of years, and no one took much notice. Then they have this lesbian in sport story, and suddenly they get a huge amount of coverage.

Sarah Dingle: That New Zealand tour was the first time since 1937 that any journalists had travelled with the Australian women's cricket team, despite years of dominating the international game and winning consecutive World Cups.

The situation was probably best summed up by the satirical TV news series, Frontline:

Emma: This is not about lesbians, it's about unfair dismissal.

Brian: Yeah, by lesbians.

Emma: You can't say that!

Brian: No, we've got someone else to do that.

Emma: I thought you never wanted to do another women's sports story again?

Brian: This is not another women's sports story, this is a leso story.

Sarah Dingle: The Denise Annetts complaint was not upheld, but it had a huge impact.

Caroline Symons: What it did was it made the lesbian label be the scapegoat, and that homophobia is actually used within women's sport (and it still happens) as a way of controlling women, if you like, and of maintaining a very feminine image, a hetero-sexy image that becomes really important with women's sport. There's evidence of comportment and image-making classes that have to be covered by top-level women's sporting teams.

Sarah Dingle: Which ones?

Caroline Symons: I'm not going to answer that one.

Sarah Dingle: What kind of comportment?

Caroline Symons: The whole preparation for the media and the way that you perform in that area has to be carefully monitored.

Commentator [archival]: …and caught at short leg! And the seventh wicket goes down. Erin Osborne from the pavilion end and Alex Blackwell under the helmet takes the catch. A simple catch in the end but still…

Alex Blackwell: Some people would grow their hair long so that they don't attract a sort of gay image. People wear makeup in some sports when there's a TV game. Why do they do that?

Sarah Dingle: I'm at the home of Australia's most capped female cricketer, Alex Blackwell, who's in an extraordinary 12th year of playing for her country. Alex Blackwell is an openly gay sportswoman who's made it all the way to the top, but even there, she's come across public homophobia.

Alex Blackwell: It was a comment made at a cricket event by someone working in cricket.

Sarah Dingle: For Cricket Australia?

Alex Blackwell: Yes. And that person said to another member of the cricket community that it's getting better, the fact that there are more males around the team. Basically boyfriends and husbands. It really hurt me. This person's attitude was that the fewer lesbians in the team, that would be a better thing, a comment that made me feel like what have I been doing for the last 10 years representing Australia when the attitude is it would be better if I just leave?

Sarah Dingle: An all-rounder, Alex Blackwell has captained New South Wales and Australian sides, helped the national team win a further two World Cups, and she's still only 31.

Even Alex Blackwell has felt the impact of the Denise Annetts affair.

Alex Blackwell: The way the Denise Annetts story rolled out, there was a very negative attitude toward gay women in cricket and that has been something that I've been aware of since a very young age.

Sarah Dingle: Alex Blackwell started playing for Australia in 2003, but the Denise Annetts allegations from a decade earlier were still affecting women's cricket.

Alex Blackwell: I didn't want to add fuel to the fire. It was apparent that it was a negative thing to be a gay person, and so I think I really just pushed it aside and didn't come to terms with my own sexuality for a very long time, and I think that's really unfortunate because it was probably my mid 20s when I really accepted that I was gay.

Sarah Dingle: That's what that stereotype of 'all female cricketers are gay' did to you, it basically made you hide the truth even from yourself.

Alex Blackwell: Yeah, I think it did. Having a gay image was not necessarily something our team wanted or our sport wanted.

Sarah Dingle: In Australia, female sportspeople are often hit with a double whammy. There's homophobia, and there's also sexism. What that means is on the one hand, a disproportionate interest in who's a lesbian, and on the other hand, a crushing lack of interest in their actual sports.

We're in Sydney's east, and rugby coach Lou Ferris is telling a men's team exactly what they should be doing.

Lou Ferris was the first ever female coach in the Shute Shield, becoming head coach of West Harbour's First Grade Colts.

She played rugby for Australia for ten years, including captaining the side in 2001. Throughout her playing career, Lou Ferris was never publicly out.

Lou Ferris: Throughout my whole rugby career, that always played on my mind, about it damaging sort of the women's code in women's rugby and how it would impact the straight girls that were playing as well. I didn't want there to be this labelling that only lesbians play rugby union because it's a contact sport.

Sarah Dingle: Unlike Australian men's teams, there are many women at a national level who are openly gay in their sport.

Lou Ferris: When I first started, pretty much there would have been only about…in a squad of 25 perhaps five that were gay. During the World Cup when I represented Australia, the two World Cups, it would have been almost a 50-50 split.

Sarah Dingle: With her female teammates, being straight or gay was a non-issue. But to the male-dominated sport, Lou Ferris always pretended she was straight.

Lou Ferris: At the Australian level with functions, I would actually take male partners to the functions. And when I did take female partners I actually wouldn't introduce them as my partner. I can imagine now how they were feeling, me not introducing them. I actually did have one partner that said something about it. She was quite upset.

Sarah Dingle: The notion that being a lesbian in sport is a bad thing is one that persists. Sally Shipard had a stellar ten-year career as a Matilda, after being selected at just 16 to play soccer for her country.

Sally Shipard: Well, when I first started playing with the Matildas, it was more like what percentage of girls are gay. Oh my god, that question got old. And when your pals at school ask you that, you try to be like real tongue-in-cheek back, but it kind of hurts you underneath. It wasn't like how are you performing and what have you got coming up, it was like how many of them are gay. Like, god.

Sarah Dingle: As a teenager and a Matilda, Sally Shipard was acutely conscious of the stereotype that playing women's football could make you gay.

Sally Shipard: And I had some best mates in the team that were straight. And I would be very bold with them and reassure them that that was never going to be the case, and I was very much into bold statements as a kid.

Sarah Dingle: Despite insisting she was straight, privately Sally Shipard was starting to wonder. And she was coming under other pressures. Growing up while at the same time playing football for Australia, she developed an eating disorder. At 21 she called time, and took a year off to sort everything out.

Sally Shipard: Having the break allowed me to explore that part of myself. And I remember the conversation with Dad when I came home, and I said the exact words, 'Dad, I've started kissing girls.' And he was so nervous, and he said, 'It's a case of jailbird syndrome.' We've kind of had a laugh about it since.

Sarah Dingle: Sally Shipard re-joined the Matildas a year older, and now openly gay. Apart from a bit of teasing about her change of heart, Sally Shipard says the Matildas themselves were totally accepting of gay players.

I asked her if it would be the same if it were the Socceroos.

Sally Shipard: Simple answer, no.

Sarah Dingle: Do you know of any male footballers of any code who have not come out while they were playing?

Sally Shipard: Yeah, I do. Yeah, it was pretty startling when he said the words to me that he doesn't think that he would've gotten to where he did if he had've been open about his sexuality. Which kind of sucked hearing.

Sarah Dingle: How high did he get?

Sally Shipard: National team.

Sarah Dingle: Time and time again Background Briefing has been told of elite male football players of several codes, past and present, who are gay but still too afraid to come out.

Brennan Bastyovansky says homophobic language plays a big role in that fear.

Brennan Bastyovansky: Even just recently when you had the incident with the Waratahs where Jacques Potgieter called somebody a faggot a couple of times. It's rumoured that there are gay people on both the Waratahs and the Brumbies.

Sarah Dingle: How good are your sources?

Brennan Bastyovansky: Well, some of my friends have dated them. But yes, we know of people, through rumour, that play on the Wallabies, the Brumbies, the Waratah and the All Blacks. So there's rumour of someone on the English team as well. I mean, again, they're only rumours and until I sleep with them myself, I won't really know, until they come out.

Sarah Dingle: And similarly, while there's never been an openly gay player in the national AFL, PEGS captain Sean Towner says there's plenty of candidates.

Sean Towner: Statistics do suggest that 9%, 10% of the population identifies as same-sex attracted and that wouldn't be any different within the AFL ranks.

Sarah Dingle: How many gay players have you heard of nationally?

Sean Towner: Probably 10 to 15 that I've heard of, but there's 40-odd players on every AFL list and 18 to 20 teams, so 750, 760 players. Statistics suggest that it's upwards of 70 that would identify as same-sex attracted.

Sarah Dingle: Having all elite male footballers apparently straight sends a message not just to the players but also to fans.

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne is an Essendon tragic.

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne: My husband doesn't let me have Essendon memorabilia on the walls in the main house.

Sarah Dingle: Right…

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne: But in the laundry…

Sarah Dingle: Oh okay, you're allowed to have some stuff in the laundry?

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne: Yes, one of the proudest days of my life, that.

Sarah Dingle: Premiers, 2000.

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne: And in the upstairs toilet is the 1993 Premiership poster.

Sarah Dingle: Jason Tuazon-McCheyne has notched up 31 years as an Essendon member, but he's spent 29 of those years in the closet at games and functions. Two years ago he was at a sponsorship dinner for Essendon player Brendon Goddard.

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne: I was sitting at the table with my husband and there was another guy with his husband. And neither of us were willing to reveal…I was like, 'Hi I'm Jason,' and he was, 'Hi I'm Adrian,' and, 'Hi I'm Paul,' and, 'Hi I'm Rob.' But there was no discussion of anything else. Whereas if it had've been a woman I would've said, 'This is my wife Susan,' no problems. But we were afraid. And I remember coming home from that event, coming home and thinking 'I can't do this anymore.'

Sarah Dingle: Jason asked Essendon whether the club would be interested in having an LGBTI supporters' group, to emphasise publicly that Essendon was an inclusive club. The club said yes.

Player Brendon Goddard agreed to speak at the launch of the Purple Bombers in March:

Brendon Goddard: ... as I've grown up and matured I believe that everyone should be treated equal…

Sarah Dingle: Already the Purple Bombers have more than 70 members. But it hasn't all been positive from other fans.

Jason Tuazon-McCheyne: Well, I've been called a rich faggot. I'm not rich so at least I wasn't called a bogan one. There's been other abuse. We've had people say, you know, 'we will not follow the Essendon Football Club anymore', we've had people say 'we already tolerate you, why do we need to do this' and go from that angle. And as of last weekend, people still use the words 'faggot' and 'poofter' in derogatory ways, and 'gay' in derogatory ways, and it hurts.

Sarah Dingle: According to the just-released international study on homophobia in sport, Australians see spectator stands as the number one place where homophobia is most likely to occur.

Study leader, Andrew Purchas:

Andrew Purchas: I think that's very important for the codes to realise, because creating an environment where spectators feel welcome is actually really important. And there's potentially a reasonably significant number of people who don't feel that they're welcome to watch that sport and so are very unlikely to become involved.

Sarah Dingle: To make sport safe, change has to take place on all sides; in the stands, on the field, and within the administration. A year ago, Andrew Purchas and his team persuaded five major codes—Cricket Australia, the NRL, the AFL, the FFA and the ARU—to sign up to a landmark Anti-Homophobia Framework. But what does that mean in practice? Background Briefing asked each of the five what they'd done since to fulfil their obligations, and you can read their responses on our website.

Now Andrew Purchas is going one step further, developing a rating system with the Australian Human Rights Commission to evaluate each sport's performance.

Andrew Purchas: We're actually implementing what's being called a Pride in Sport Index, PSI. That will then provide an annual measure for identifying exactly what the codes are doing consistent with the framework which they signed up to.

Sarah Dingle: Cultures can change, and sometimes people can surprise you.

After ten years of being in the closet, Victorian amateur footballer Jason Ball stopped hiding.

Jason Ball: One of my teammates, he was like, 'What about you Bally, aren't you seeing someone at the moment?' And I was like, 'Yeah, I'm seeing someone.' I would always use words like 'they' and 'them' instead of 'he' or 'she' to try and get around. And my teammates said, 'Well, what's his name?' And my heart started beating really fast, I thought maybe this was a test. And I just said, 'His name is James.'

Sarah Dingle: Just like that, Jason's decade of pretence was over, and now it was up to his teammates to respond.

Jason Ball: My teammate said, 'Has he come to any football matches yet?' And I said, 'No, he hasn't.' And he goes, 'Oh you should bring him down, it'd be really great to meet him.' And this felt like a weight got lifted off my shoulders. And one by one conversations like this kept happening around my football club, where my teammates would reach out to me to say we know that you're gay and it's not a big deal to us.

Sarah Dingle: After his teammates' support, Jason Ball took it to the next level. In 2012, he came out publicly as gay. Jason Ball says he made history as the first player at any level of Australian Rules football to do so. It turned into a media sensation. But before he fronted the cameras, Jason briefed his VAFA club Yarra Glen.

Jason Ball: And to my surprise they told me to go for it. That support was I guess what I needed to make that step. And I think that that is probably what's going to be required for an AFL player to come out. They're going to need to know that their club and that the AFL are going to support them. And I think at the moment they wouldn't be confident in that.

Sarah Dingle: Fellow Victorian amateur footballer Sean Towner came out publicly the same year and also had a positive response from his teammates. But he agrees the national AFL needs to lead the way on stopping homophobia, and not wait for change.

Sean Towner: At the moment we are trying to build from the ground up rather than from the top down. I really think they need to take a strong stance, because it would be tough gig to know that you were gay and that your employer didn't particularly support you in that just because it was seen to be a difficult subject.

Sarah Dingle: Even after Sean Towner came out, it took months before his partner Mike Winn agreed to go anywhere near a sports field to watch him play.

Mike Winn: I started feeling pretty terrible that I was his partner and I still wasn't turning up to games.

Sarah Dingle: Eventually Mike could no longer refuse.

Mike Winn: I was just walking around the sidelines, just trying to spot Sean and trying not to get hit by a football or something. I was terrified. Then I ran into one of Sean's friends who was on the sidelines who was just so nice to me, called out my name and shook my hand and asked me how my uni course was going.

Sarah Dingle: Mike started to relax, and then he found the WAGs, the wives and girlfriends.

Mike Winn: By the time the game was finished and Sean had showered and come back into the club rooms, I was hanging out with six or seven other wives and girlfriends. I think I was having champagne or something, I was having the time of my life. Any club function, I will definitely be there hanging with the ladies, just having so much fun. It was the best thing I ever did, going to that footy club.

Sarah Dingle: Sean Towner says he was always sure that Mike would be welcomed by his club.

Sean Towner: Myself knowing the people they were, I trusted them implicitly that they'd treat Mike with open arms and they have. Now he's affectionately known as the chief WAG, being the partner of the captain of the footy club. So he loves it, he's just been welcomed with open arms.

Mike Winn: I'm still living in my 14-year-old self, thinking that the world is full of really scary people. So I'm waiting for someone to call Sean or me a bad word. But these days, I'd kind of dare them to do it because of the backlash they'd get from me and the whole of Sean's footy club.

Sarah Dingle: Sean Towner says coming out is personal, but it's also important that elite athletes do so.

Sean Towner: The level of support out there will far outweigh anything else, in my opinion. Look at it as putting yourself on the right side of history and being someone that your younger 12- to 15-year-old self can look up to and be proud of for that next generation coming through. They'll have that role model that you didn't have, and maybe it will make it easier for them.

Sarah Dingle: Background Briefing's co-ordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Lawrence Bull, technical production by Andrei Shabunov, the executive producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm Sarah Dingle.