LGBTQ+: Keighley Cougars on their inclusive vision for rugby league
- Published
In 2019 Keighley Cougars hosted the first Pride game British professional sport had ever seen
It's the mid-1990s and the West Yorkshire town of Keighley has been struck by 'Cougarmania'.
The local rugby league team has hit a remarkable run of form after Mick O'Neil, Mike Smith and Neil Spencer joined the board and embarked on rebranding, winning title after title before excitable crowds inside a ground which, just a few years earlier, had fallen into disrepair.
But as the Cougars play out a sporting fairytale on the pitch, the chairman's son is grappling with a nightmare.
"I used to go to bed and say a prayer: 'Please God, don't let anyone know I'm gay,'" Ryan O'Neill remembers.
A young lad, lying awake in his room, thinking things that are all too familiar to many in the LGBTQ+ community.
Never in those darkest hours did O'Neill imagine he'd come out, or get married, or become the second member of his family to save Keighley Cougars from the brink of extinction.
Nor did he think the club he loved would become a bastion of inclusivity, where the LGBTQ+ flag flies all year round.
But remarkably, that's exactly what happened.
"We said it'd be an exciting journey, so we did it!"
While rugby league was baked into the DNA of O'Neill, the same could not be said of Kaue Garcia.
"Being Brazilian, I hadn't heard about the sport whatsoever," he says with a laugh.
"But Ryan and I have been married for 10 years and obviously I know the stories of Cougarmania - and if you go on YouTube, you see the atmosphere and everything that they did."
Yet with their lives in London and a successful business to run, that was about as far as the couple's association with the Cougars went - until O'Neill heard the club was in danger of shutting its doors for good.
"I thought that would be absolutely tragic," O'Neill says.
"I knew what the club meant to the community. It had added so much positivity to the town and I could see that was what was missing.
"The Cougars were the one thing in the 90s which really were successful, and Kaue and I thought we had an opportunity to do what my dad did then again.
"We said it'd be an exciting journey, so we did it!
"I thought we could make an impact, but it was super risky"
Since rescuing Keighley Cougars, O'Neill (left) and husband Garcia (right) have returned the team to success while championing the LGBTQ+ community
O'Neill and Garcia admit they didn't realise the scale of what they were signing up for when they bought the club in January 2019.
"The bar was derelict, and the team manager came up and immediately gave me an invoice for kit for about £25,000," O'Neill remembers.
"We had about 12 players, so we had to get a team together for the following week - and it suddenly dawned on us what a monumental task we'd taken on!"
What had initially been planned as a short stay in a budget hotel was extended for weeks on end as Garcia and O'Neill remained in Keighley, working to complete the tasks needed to keep the club functioning.
But they also had a bigger vision for the Cougars that put LGBTQ+ inclusivity at the centre of everything they did.
"Keighley is a really unique setting - a former mill town in West Yorkshire where I'd struggled to come to terms with my sexuality," O'Neill says.
"I thought we could make an impact here, but it was super risky because the fans didn't know us and it's a traditional sport."
"I was expecting the rainbow flags to be thrown in the bin"
Pride flags fly year-round at Keighley Cougars since O'Neill and Garcia bought the club
Despite those concerns, the couple went ahead with their plans to try and make rugby league a more welcoming place for the LGBTQ+ community.
Six months after O'Neill and Garcia took over the Cougars made history when they faced West Wales Raiders in front of a crowd of more than 2,000 people in the first Pride game British professional sport had ever seen.
The Cougars players wore a special kit that raised money for LGBTQ+ charities and a drag queen took to the pitch to entertain the supporters who had packed into Cougar Park.
And while the match was a clear success, the couple acknowledge they were taking a leap into the unknown by even proposing such a game.
"We were nervous," Garcia says.
"The instructions I'd had from Ryan when we first started going to Keighley was: 'We can't hold hands up north, it's not as open as in London.' He warned me of that. So it was worrying.
"We imagined the consequences of the crowd not supporting us or people not coming, but actually it was the biggest attendance that we had because people bought into it.
"Everyone who came to the Pride game was given a rainbow flag," O'Neill adds.
"I was expecting them to be thrown in the bin, but walking round the terraces and seeing young kids and old men waving them in that setting was so heartwarming. They'd embraced it straight away.
"By saving the club, we'd built credibility with the fans. They were grateful for what we'd done and they'd taken us into their hearts."
"We have to bring these people along, and hopefully change their opinion"
The Cougars have hosted two more Pride games since 2019, with plans for another this season.
Throw in the tens of thousands of pounds the club has raised for LGBTQ+ charities and it'd be tempting to call Garcia and O'Neill's commitment to inclusivity an unqualified success and wrap the story up.
But that wouldn't be the truth.
"We've had new fans who are coming in who haven't been with us from the start," O'Neill says.
"They don't know us or what we've done for Keighley, so they're just seeing a rugby club run by two gay guys, and I'm starting to see negative comments and a few slightly homophobic comments aimed at Kaue and me.
"It's made me realise we have to hammer home the message of inclusivity to new fans who aren't necessarily of that mindset.
"We have to be clever about that, because we don't want any negativity."
Finding ways to bring those fans along is something the couple are already thinking about.
But in many ways, it pales in comparison to the challenge Garcia and O'Neill have already overcome - which is simply having the strength to be themselves at a time when so few club owners are out or open about their sexuality.
"We're proud of what we've done," O'Neill says.
"I never dreamed of coming out when I was with the Cougars in the 90s, and now I'm basically the biggest gay at the club!
"And we always fly the rainbow flags all year round to get that message out - which is that Keighley is for everyone."
Keighley Cougars owners Kaue Garcia and Ryan O'Neill were speaking to Jack Murley on the BBC's LGBT Sport Podcast. You can hear new episodes every Wednesday on BBC Sounds.