The 5 male rugby stars proving you can be out and proud at the top of the men’s game

American rugby union player who came out as gay in 2020. He is an advocate for inclusion and diversity in the sport.

A self-described “rugby maniac,” Ibañez played in college for the University of Massachusetts, and in his coming out message posted photos with his boyfriend Fergus Wade, an English medical student he met in 2017 while Wade was doing research at Harvard studying sleep deprivation in fruit flies. 

Posting the photos on his coming out story added power to his desire be his authentic self. He created his Instagram account yesterday as “thatgayrugger,” since he is one of the very few openly gay pro rugby players, past or present.

Maxwell-Keys, who took charge of the 2020 Gallagher Premiership final, eventually decided the time was right to reveal his sexuality to colleagues at Twickenham as well as his local club, Lichfield RFC in 2019.

Now based in Cheltenham, he aims to continue moving up the referees' pecking order - and his experiences since coming out have indicated that sexuality will be no barrier to that.

The Leinster scrum-half came out as gay in June 2022, and thanked coaches Leo Cullen and Stuart Lancaster for their “unbelievable” support.

McCarthy added that he had previously thought about quitting professional rugby union because of his sexuality.

The 27-year-old added that he had taken strength from the stories of footballer Josh Cavallo and American footballer Carl Nassib, in addition to his former bisexual teammate Jack Dunne.

All fans, players, and anyone who knows anything about rugby will know the name, Nigel Owens. Besides having the record for most test matches refereed, Owens has earned a reputation as one of the top rugby referees around the world.

The Welshman is also a TV personality and a devoted activist for the LGBT cause, winning “Gay Sports Personality of the Decade” at the Stonewall awards ceremony in London back in 2015.

"It's such a big taboo to be gay in my line of work, I had to think very hard about it because I didn't want to jeopardise my career," he confessed.

"Coming out was very difficult and I tried to live with who I really was for years. I knew I was 'different' from my late teens, but I was just living a lie."

Refereeing in as sport like rugby also hindered his decision.

"When I became a referee, it became clear that there was nobody in the sport who was gay.

"The rugby world is very heterosexual and masculine, and this made things difficult.

"Although that’s not to say that the sport is openly homophobic. It was just never an environment where I felt like I could be myself."

Ireland’s own Dunne joined the list of history makers in 2021, when, by publicly coming out as bisexual, he became the first-ever active professional player employed by the IRFU to speak openly about being a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

“It was strange enough. When I originally found out, I was completely okay with it,” he began. “But then, you know, when you’re in a teenage boys’ school, people say things that aren’t the nicest so you kind of internalise them. So then, for about a year or so I really wasn’t happy with it and I wished I wasn’t bisexual at all.”

Like many young people struggling with their sexuality, Dunne’s initial feelings were that he would never tell anyone or act on it. He describes bisexuality as sometimes being both a blessing and a curse in that way, saying, “it’s easier to hide than if you were gay because you don’t have to pretend to like girls, and you don’t have to pretend to enjoy kissing a girl if you’re out with the lads on a Saturday night.”