Despite support, any gay footballers are keeping quiet. Jason Dowling asks why.

When big-hitting rugby league prop forward Ian Roberts came out in 1995 and told the world he was gay, many thought the final closet had opened.

The blokey, tough world of rugby league was forced to accept that players not only came from different socioeconomic, ethnic and religious backgrounds, but that not all shared the same sexual preference.

But as history has proved across sport, it is not easy to be a gay sports star - especially if you're a man.

Few famous sporting men have outed themselves - in Australian Rules Football there have been none.

Most statistics point to between 5 and 10 per cent of the population being gay: Australian Rules Football is more than 100 years old and with about 680 contracted AFL players this year, the numbers suggests not everyone's being honest.

Why has there never been an openly gay Australian Rules footballer?

"That's a really really good question," St Kilda life member Ian "Molly" Meldrum said last week. Maybe, Molly said, "when sportsmen reach an elite level they realise it is easier to fit in and succeed if you are not different, so they just keep it to themselves".

Coburg Football Club president Phil Cleary said he played against a very tough and skilled footballer at a senior level of Australian Rules who was gay. Mr Clearly said the man remained unwilling to talk about the issue because he did not want to be remembered as "the gay footballer".

The former player, Cleary said, never came forward during his career because "there was nothing to be gained from coming out". Cleary said there was still little incentive in the macho football culture to encourage this.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire suggested it was easier for people in areas such as the arts and the media to express their individuality rather than those in "hierarchical organisations like the army and footy clubs".

McGuire appears on the front cover of this month's issue of glossy gay monthly QMagazine and is quoted as saying he would be "rapt" if Collingwood was the first club to have an openly gay player. "I think, whereas once upon a time this would become a major issue, now it would be, 'Oh yeah? Good. Next'," he said.

McGuire said he could not speak for other clubs on their attitude towards gay footballers but added he was prepared to give Richmond the benefit of the doubt over its decision not to allow star recruit Nathan Brown play a gay doctor on The Footy Show.

"I am prepared to back the Tigers that it wasn't homophobic, although it appeared at the time that it was," McGuire said.

Carlton president Ian Collins told The Sunday Age that Carlton would have no problems drafting a gay player or if one of their players declared he was homosexual.

Despite the support, no one has come out - at any level of the game.

Richard Watts, head of Collingwood's gay supporter group the Pink Magpies, suggested there remained "a strong, but fairly covert, level of homophobia in football which is a real disincentive to come out".

He said the AFL was unlikely to deal with the issue of gay footballers until one was identified.

Any mention of vilification based on sexual preference is strangely absent from AFL Rule 30, which is intended to combat the vilification of players.

But, according to gay comic and morning radio presenter Adam Richard, it is not just the absence of rules protecting gay rights that is inhibiting the emergence of gay AFL footballers.

Richard said that some in society were slower than others to embrace changing community attitudes towards homosexuals. "I know a friend of mine was writing an article for a gay newspaper a couple of years ago and contacted a club, which I will not name, and he was told in no uncertain terms there were no gay players at the club and there never would be any players at the club," Richard said.

Brett Connell, general manager of the Victorian Amateur Football Association, said: "Let's be honest, footy has been about beer and blokes for many, many years, unfortunately."

The chief executive of the AFL Players Association, Rob Kerr, said he could not identify a reason why there had never been a declared homosexual footballer but said the association would fully support any player who announced this.

The treatment of past sports stars who have "come out" has hardly been encouraging.

Billie Jean King, the legendary American tennis champion, said she lost 10 years of sponsorship deals when she was outed as gay.

English soccer star Justin Fashanu, in 1990, became the first and only English soccer player to announce he was homosexual. His career plummeted after the announcement and in 1998 he hanged himself.

It was not quite as tough an ordeal for NSW rugby league star Ian Roberts when he came out in 1995 as Australia's first gay footballer - but neither was it easy. One letter he received may go some way to answering why there has never been an openly gay AFL footballer. "AIDS will finish you in hell. SODOMIST. An arsehole bandit. You are pure filth and will die SOON!" it read.