Rugby Players Threatened To Boycott Tour After Rumours Ian Roberts Was Gay

Three unnamed major rugby league players threatened to boycott an international Kangaroos tour to avoid sharing a room with Ian Roberts, following rumours prior to his coming out that the former NRL player was gay.

The revelation came from former Australian Rugby League chief executive John Quayle, who spoke to filmmakers on Thursday as part of the upcoming documentary Light – The Ian Roberts Story, focusing on Roberts’ story as the first and only professional Australian male rugby player to come out as gay.

The incident in question occurred during Roberts’ selection for the Australian team’s 1994 tour of England, just before he came out.

“I was quite shocked a little while later when Ian was selected for Australia to go on a Kangaroo tour, the representatives – three at the time, players – came into the office of the ARL to indicate that if Ian Roberts was selected in the team, they wouldn’t want to go,” Quayle said in the interview.

“Which was quite a shock to someone like me. I’d never heard of anything like that because the ultimate prize for a player was the Australian jumper.”

“They’d heard the rumours that Ian was gay … I remember one in particular used strong language and those languages back then was, ‘He’s a poof … we don’t want to room in that situation’.”

Despite the fact that the three men in question were senior players, Quayle said there was never any question as to Roberts’ inclusion in the team following the backlash.

“It ended very quickly because my chairman at the time, Ken Arthurson, was the chairman of the International Rugby League as well,” Quayle said.

“I went to Ken and said, ‘Look, we’ve got a couple of players here that, if selected, don’t want to tour with Ian Roberts.’

“Well, Ken Arthurson was absolutely shocked because he was a long-term administrator, he’d never heard – like any of us – something like this.

“So Ken’s comment to me, which I remember so clearly, was, ‘Well that’s good mate, just tell them they won’t be selected. That’s an easy decision.’ And that was it.”

“This story is so much bigger than Ian,” says filmmaker

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Roberts said that although he knew the views of some of his former team members, he struggled to watch the clip of Quayle’s interview for the documentary, saying he “hadn’t got all the way through it”.

Roberts was approached to take part in the documentary by filmmaker Heath Davis after seven Sea Eagles players boycotted a 2022 match tafter refusing to wear Pride jerseys.

Davis said some of the stories Roberts told him were shocking.

“I thought I had a pretty good grasp of it, but I was just scraping the surface, he said. “And even today we continue to find more ‘WTF’ discoveries. He’s still living the narrative each day. Plot lines just thicken. This story is much bigger than Ian. It’s really an allegory, and he represents so many people in telling it.”

Speaking in 2023, Roberts said he believed it was much harder for players to come out now than it was in 1995, despite homosexuality still being criminalised in Tasmania at the time.

“It’s so much more instant, there’s so much more media and hype on hand, because of everyone having phones [and opinions],” he said.

Light – The Ian Roberts Story is set for a cinematic release next year, planned to coincide with the 2026 State of Origin series.