In an interview dubbed exclusive by the i newspaper, the respected rugby referee reflected, on the eve of his scheduled retirement, on his realisation that he was gay, on his life in rugby and the part he played in pushing back the homophobia in it. He is not lost to the sport, as he is soon to meet the Welsh Rugby Union with a view to coaching the next generation of officials.
At the age of 47, he is looking forward to less travel and therefore to owning a dog again, four years after Mali, a much-loved German Shepherd, was laid to rest. He has bought a smallholding of 30 acres where he will keep “a couple of beef cattle”. He says he is “seeing someone at the moment”, and has his father and godchildren and cousins to keep him company, but he does not have a long-term partner, and he even muses how he might have given all his success up for a perceived “normal” life of a partner and kids and someone to wake up next to each day. “People have said to me that I am brave, and I have gone home at night, and I am lying there alone and I am thinking to myself ‘am I a brave man or have I been a foolish man?’ If I could change all that to have a normal, quiet life, believe me I would.”
Referring to a couple of exchanges on-field with Jefferson Poirot, in which he complimented the French front-row on continuing to wear rainbow laces long after the LGBT campaign was formally over, the interview concluded:
Owens agrees the exchange with Poirot could never have happened, say, 15 years ago. And, by the way, he advocates the mic’ing up of referees in football, to attack the endemic culture of swearing and dissent. “People ask me what will happen when a gay footballer comes out, and I say the majority of people in football will support that player. There will be some people who will do their best to get him out of the club, and people in the opposition crowd may shout abuse because he is gay. But I don’t think society will allow it.”
And is Owens glad he has helped that change occur? “I know I have been part of it,” he says. “When I had a letter from a mum thanking me for sharing my story, and that her son tried to take his own life, but he read my story and plucked up the courage to tell them, and now he is living a wonderful life – it makes you a little bit proud. It’s helping other people and it’s probably helping me when I go through those difficult times.”
One assumes that he will continue to be a contributor to Welsh language broadcasting but I hope he will not be lost to an Anglophone audience.
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