Kaue Garcia and Ryan O’Neill had actually owned a sports group for no greater than 6 months when they chose the time was ideal to shake things up. What they required more than anything else, they felt, was a drag queen.
They were not completely sure what the response would be. Keighley Cougars, the English club they had actually purchased nearly as an act of grace, was not an apparent location to begin pressing limits.
Keighley is an old fabric town, surrounded by the windswept moors of Yorkshire’s Brontë Country. The scars of postindustrial decay stay livid here: magnificent surroundings that houses a few of the most denied locations in England. And the Cougars play Rugby League, a particularly ruthless model of a notoriously bruising discipline.
Mainly the unique protect of old pit towns in northern England and northeastern Australia, Rugby League includes 26 musclebound gamers charging into each other at complete speed for 80 minutes. Believe N.F.L.-level accidents, however without all the helmets and cushioning. It is a difficult video game, played by hard individuals, in difficult locations.
The strategy hatched by Mr. Garcia and Mr. O’Neill, then– to organize a Pride-themed day at Keighley’s arena, and to utilize a drag queen as the pregame home entertainment– appeared enthusiastic.
“We were concerned no one would come,” Mr. O’Neill stated. His spouse feared a much more stinging rebuke. “We ‘d put a drag queen on the middle of the field, have a huge celebration, and everybody would simply vanish,” Mr. Garcia stated.
On the other hand, there were some factors for hope. When they had actually purchased the group, at the start of 2019, they had actually ended up being– as far as they understood– the only gay owners of a males’s sports group anywhere outside the United States. (They have actually never ever examined that status in any terrific depth, and The New York Times was not able to discover any proof to negate it.)
No one had actually truly appeared to mind. More than anything, the town appeared grateful for their existence. Much more crucial than their sexuality was that they had actually conserved Keighley’s cherished group from the verge of personal bankruptcy. By this year, they had lots of credit in the bank.
Rugby League, too, had actually shown a more inviting area. The guys’s variation of the sport has actually had a variety of freely gay gamers and referees, something that can not be stated– for instance– of guys’s soccer, Britain’s fantastic sporting hegemon.
The couple recognized, however, that tolerance and approval are not always synonyms.
They understood that a drag queen may be pressing their luck. They understood, too, that they were going to do it anyhow.
Flying the Flag
The name of the Cougars’ arena is rather grander than its truth: the roofings of the 2 covered grandstands at Cougar Park are weather-beaten, rusty and pockmarked with damages left by roaming rugby balls. The other 2 sides include exposed concrete balconies.