By Callum Ludwig
A decade of making a difference for LGBTIQA+ people in community sport will be celebrated as the Yarra Glen Football Netball Club locks horns with cross-town rivals Healesville on Saturday 18 May.
It marks the 10th anniversary of the Pride Cup, a now annual match held by the River Pigs with the aim of supporting and welcoming members of the LGBTIQA+ community.
Yarra Glen Football Netball Club Treasurer David Ball said the club remains very proud of the event.
“It’s one of those things, 10 years ago we thought it was just a one-off event that we’d run and it’s grown legs over the years,” he said.
“We’ve inspired the AFL to have the Sydney-St Kilda Pride Game and now there’s a Pride Cup organisation that organises pride cups all around Australia in all different sports.”
David is the father of former Yarra Glen player Jason Ball, who came out as gay to his teammates in 2012.
The Pride Cup was later devised as a showing of support for Jason and first held in 2014 to great success, with 50m arcs painted in rainbow colours and rainbow designs later being incorporated into the jumpers from the following year onwards.
David said he thinks the message of the Pride Cup remains very important today.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had a couple of incidents in the AFL where players have let go with some homophobic slurs so we’ve still got to do a bit more because a large part of it is about education,” he said.
“We have an education session before each Pride Cup that all the players that are playing take part in so they understand that often the gay community just don’t participate in sport because they just find it too hard, the homophobic language is too hurtful and uncomfortable for them.”
According to the Pride Cup organisation, there will be 10 Pride-related sporting events taking place over the weekend of Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 May alone.
David said he thinks the whole Yarra Glen community has been very supportive of the Pride Cup message.
“It’s wonderful to have something that does bring the community together a bit more, football clubs are often seen as blokey environments, but when you can do things like run Pride Cups, you can illustrate to everybody that we’re very welcoming people,” he said.
“We play a different club every year so that we can spread the message across the league and it’s fantastic, but to finally be able to get Healesville on the park after being in different divisions for a couple of years is great and they’ve been very supportive as well.”
Healesville FNC held its own education session at their Tuesday night training session in the lead-up to the game.
Healesville Football Netball Club President Toby Millman said it’s an event they are glad to be a part of.
“We are an inclusive club where we welcome people from all walks of life and we’re just really excited to be part of what’s a fantastic day for the community,” he said.
“I think it was, especially for an old boy, it was just an eye-opener because sometimes you don’t realise that the small things you say can have a really big effect on people, it was a really great education piece not only for the players but everyone at the club.”
From a sporting standpoint, the eighth-placed River Pigs will be looking to maintain their near-flawless record in Pride Cup games, having only ever lost one Senior Football game on the special occasion, last year against eventual premier Powelltown.
They will face a tough challenge in the high-flying Bloods, who currently top the Division One ladder.
Pride Cup CEO Hayley Conway said they are proud to mark a decade of LGBTIQ+ inclusion and iconic celebration in sport, with this milestone 10th anniversary of the Yarra Valley Pride Cup.
“Communities like Yarra Glen are leading the way. Every sports club can learn something from them”, she said.
Jason Ball said he came out in the hope that it would drive cultural change within the AFL so that more players and athletes and officials can feel comfortable to be themselves in that environment.
“When I was a kid growing up, the football club felt like the one place I would never be able to be myself. It’s hard to describe the feeling of liberation all those years ago, standing side by side with my teammates in our rainbow jumpers for the first time, standing against homophobia and sending a powerful message that sport should be everyone’s game,” he said.
“I’m so incredibly proud of the Yarra Glen community for keeping this tradition alive for 10 years. Yarra Glen planted a seed that has grown into a nationwide movement for change, and the impact has been felt far beyond the sporting field.”
