‘They’d heard the rumour Ian was gay’: Three stars threatened to boycott Kangaroos tour over Roberts

Three of the biggest names in Australian rugby league threatened to boycott a Kangaroos tour because they did not want to room with Ian Roberts after hearing rumours that he was gay.

The shocking revelation comes from Light – The Ian Roberts Story, a documentary scheduled for a cinematic release to coincide with next year’s State of Origin series. It is a chance for Roberts – the first and only Australian professional male rugby league player to come out as gay – to tell his incredible life story.

Some of the biggest names in the sport – including coaches Trent Robinson (Roosters), Ricky Stuart (Raiders), Ivan Cleary (Panthers), former Kangaroos and premiership-winning coach Tim Sheens, Kangaroos and Balmain great Wayne Pearce and former NRL chief executive David Gallop – have been interviewed for the movie.

On Thursday, former Australian Rugby League chief executive John Quayle spoke on camera to the documentary makers, revealing the response from some Australian players to Roberts’ selection for the 1994 tour of England.

“I was quite shocked a little while later when Ian was selected for Australia to go on a Kangaroo tour, the representatives – three at the time, players – came into the office of the ARL to indicate that if Ian Roberts was selected in the team, they wouldn’t want to go,” Quayle said in the interview.

“Which was quite a shock to someone like me. I’d never heard of anything like that because the ultimate prize for a player was the Australian jumper.”

The incident occurred at the end of the 1994 season, just before Roberts had come out.

Asked why the three Australian players reacted in such a fashion, Quayle said: “Well, they’d heard the rumours that Ian was gay … I remember one in particular used strong language and those languages back then was, ‘He’s a poof … we don’t want to room in that situation’.”

Asked if they were senior players, Quayle replied: “Oh, very much so.”

The respected administrator added that no thought was given to leaving Roberts out of the Kangaroos squad to placate the trio.

“It ended very quickly because my chairman at the time, Ken Arthurson, was the chairman of the International Rugby League as well,” Quayle said.

“I went to Ken and said, ‘Look, we’ve got a couple of players here that, if selected, don’t want to tour with Ian Roberts.’

“Well, Ken Arthurson was absolutely shocked because he was a long-term administrator, he’d never heard – like any of us – something like this.

“So Ken’s comment to me, which I remember so clearly, was, ‘Well that’s good mate, just tell them they won’t be selected. That’s an easy decision.’ And that was it.”

Asked to identify the three players who did not want to tour with Roberts, Quayle said: “I don’t think that’s really in my interest.”

Roberts, who sits on the Venues NSW board alongside Quayle, has long been aware that some of his former teammates held such views. The 60-year-old felt that most adopted a more progressive outlook after getting to know him – “We all became good friends,” Roberts said – but still found watching Quayle’s clip triggering.

“I hadn’t got all the way through it … I can’t watch it,” Roberts said.

He agreed to participate in the documentary in the hope his story could save lives, as well as to honour Arron Light, a youth who was allegedly murdered.

“It’s about kids in the suburbs killing themselves,” Roberts said of gay men struggling with their sexuality.

“That’s the premise, that’s what this story is about, that’s how important it is. It always comes back to Arron Light for me. All this bigotry [after coming out] 30 years ago, we haven’t really progressed that far.

“I don’t mind my name being used to get this message out there. It’s called the Ian Roberts story, but it’s not my story, it’s about three kids who all died. We can do better.”

Filmmaker Heath Davis – whose credits include Broke, Book Week and Locusts – approached Roberts about the documentary project after the Manly Pride jersey scandal. Seven Sea Eagles players boycotted a match in 2022 after refusing to wear the rainbow-inspired apparel.

“It was such an awful moment for me personally,” Roberts said. “That was so sad for me. And it was my old club. I was like, ‘Guys, you have to understand the consequences of what you’re doing, the way they play out. You’ll never know about it, but it can be catastrophic’.”

The former Rabbitohs, Sea Eagles and Cowboys forward felt attitudes towards gay males hadn’t changed as much as he would have hoped after he came out in 1995.

“Rugby league had an opportunity 30 years ago to be a world leader in and around this space,” he said. “We could have really stepped up to the plate when I came out.”

However, Roberts said the decision of then-North Queensland coach Tim Sheens to appoint him as club captain in 1997 was a game changer.

“That was so progressive, so out there,” he said. “He was like, ‘You’re the best man for the job.’ It doesn’t sound like much, but it was huge. Those little things [help] all the kids in the regional areas who are suffering, particularly young boys.

“They might not hear every story that happens, but they hear those stories. It gives hope.”

Davis said viewers who thought they knew the full Ian Roberts story would be stunned when they saw it told in its entirety.

“They have no idea, truly,” Davis said. “I thought I had a pretty good grasp of it, but I was just scraping the surface. And even today we continue to find more WTF discoveries. He’s still living the narrative each day. Plot lines just thicken. This story is much bigger than Ian. It’s really an allegory, and he represents so many people in telling it.”

The project is supported by Screen Australia and Screen NSW, but Davis said donations via Documentary Australia were required to complete it.

“We need everyone’s support from big corporations to the average Joe on the street to help tell the story,” Davis said.