Australian Aims to Become First Transsexual Pro Footballer

By David Salter | Gaywired.com

An Aussie Rules football fan is looking to become the first transsexual to play the competitive sport, according to an article in Sunday’s edition of The Age.

Will, who asked not to use his last name, told The Age writer Jill Stark, “I’m just an ordinary guy who wants to play football, just with slightly different circumstances of how I came to be a guy.”

The 25-year-old had a sex change two years ago and has had a double mastectomy. He takes hormones to induce body hair growth and to lower his voice. The article stated that Will “does not feel the technology is advanced enough to create a functioning penis.”

The Australian would-be footballer has gained the support of Victorian Country Football League’s president Glenn Scott, who told Will that in order to play he would need to legally change his birth certificate to reflect his male sex, but that otherwise his attempt, if successful, would be allowed.

A former Australian football captain, Nathan Buckley, told the publication he had been moved by a “touching” letter from Will asking for support. “I just think it’s tremendously courageous. Everyone should be encouraged to be themselves.”

Aussie Rules football, best known among the gay community for its annual Gods of Football fundraising calendar which features hunky players in various states of undress, is a variant of American football and rugby that dates back to the mid 1850s in the former British colony.

If his bid to play for the Bendigo Football League is successful, Will would be one of only a handful of transgender and transsexual athletes to go pro.

In 1977 American tennis player Renee Richards, a post-op MTF transsexual, won a New York Supreme Court case allowing her to compete in the US Open. Earlier this year, intersex German tennis player Sarah Gronert was cleared to compete in both International Tennis Federation and Women’s Tennis Association events as a woman.

Will, who modestly asks for no special treatment should he make a team, joked to The Age, “There might be a bit of resentment…if I turned out to be better than one or two players….They’d be thinking, ‘God, he doesn’t even have a penis and he can kick the ball better than me.’”