From The Editor: Waiting For Mitch!
Founding Editor Andrew Creagh has been waiting decades for an out AFL player. Now Mitch Brown has arrived – bisexual, fearless, and ready to tell the world.
When AFL footballer Mitch Brown revealed that he is bisexual, jaws dropped.
I’ve been waiting a long time for Mitch Brown. Decades actually.
The question, “Why aren’t there any out AFL players?” has been discussed among gay and sporting circles for a very long time.
To me, the answer was obvious: because the first out gay player would always be remembered as “the gay AFL player” rather than “the great goal-kicking AFL player”. And AFL players are usually young men who are not ready or equipped to become the spokesperson on all things LGBTQIA+.
And then there’d be the supporters. Imagine running onto the field for the first time as an out gay AFL player. There would be cheers from some quarters, but there’d be a lot of boos, hate and vilification from the stands, and trolling and death threats via social media.
How do we know this? Because we have the example set by racism. I remember when St Kilda player Nicky Winmar lifted his shirt, pointed to his skin and shouted, “I’m black and I’m proud to be black,” when spectators hurled racial abuse at him.
I remember when Adam Goodes took a stand against being racially abused, which only prompted more abuse. Goodes had won the Brownlow Medal twice and been Australian Of The Year, and was still racially abused while playing football.
I remember when English soccer fans threw bananas at black players. And I remember the story of Justin Fashanu, an English footballer who came out during his professional career, and later died by suicide.
The pressure on the first openly gay AFL player would be immense if they were still playing professionally. My advice to people who want to come out is always to make sure it is safe to do so.
But what I don’t understand is why more retired players haven’t come out. AFL has been played for 128 years! That means there have been, at the very least, 50,688 men who have played Australian Rules Football professionally. If only one per cent of them were or are gay or bisexual, that’s still 506 men, some still living. So, where are they?
If more AFL players are going to come out, there has to be a safe place for them to come out into, and that safe place could be created by the gay and bisexual players who are no longer competing. They still have influence within their clubs, but without the pressure of playing.
So I always imagined the first out male AFL player would be someone who was no longer playing.
Mitch Brown arrives at Christian Scott’s studio for his DNA photo shoot. “I’m here for the fun,” says Mitch as he strips off and positions a football over his junk.
He’s big! And most of the clothes we have for him are not going to fit. Mitch doesn’t seem to care. He insists on trying on some swimwear – that doesn’t even make it past his thigh. When I ask him to try on some DNA tank tops, he goes straight for the one that says Twink Bait. A cheeky grin lights up his face, and his partner, Lou, laughs, too.
In the 1980s, a Sydney Swans player, Warwick Capper, became the pin-up boy of the AFL. With his model good looks, short shorts, and blond mullet, he ended up on the cover of the gay magazine, Outrage. I was a teenager when I bought it. Putting Mitch Brown and his mullet on the cover of DNA in 2025 feels like a full-circle moment.
Except this time, that AFL player is bisexual and out and ready to tell the world – a first in the AFL’s 128-year history. It puts him up there among other sporting heroes like David Kopay, Ian Roberts, Billy Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Greg Louganis, Jason Collins, Orlando Cruz and Carl Nassib.
The AFL is big, old and slow, and will take years to change. Mitch Brown has given it a friendly boot up the backside to get things started.
Andrew Creagh, Founding Editor
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