Nigel Owens has revisited the Israel Folau homophobia scandal to spell out to the fallen Australia star the effect such social media posts from people in positions of influence have on kids “struggling with their identity”.
Six years ago, three-code ace Folau posted on Instagram that “hell awaits” homosexuals, comments that led Rugby Australia to terminate his contract. The 36-year-old is currently playing in Japan.
Nigel Owens on Israel Folau’s comments
Legendary ref Owens came out as gay in 2007, having previously attempted to take his own life. Speaking to Dan Biggar in a deeply personal episode of the A Load of BS on Sport podcast, Owens has a message for Folau.
“If you go back to what Israel Folau posted, the homophobic comments he posted a few years ago,” he begins.
“He needs to realise that for somebody in a position of influence like him, when he posts those things, when a young kid is struggling with their identity, and they see somebody who is at the top of his game, who’s known throughout the rugby world, saying that you’ll go to hell if you’re gay, imagine the effect that has on that young person.
“That’s the effect it had on me at the time, comments like that from other people. It drove me to, well, within 20 minutes of not being here today.”
Owens, 53, says the pressure of refereeing a Rugby World Cup final, as he did in 2015, is “nothing compared to the challenge of accepting who I truly was”.
In a raw and incredibly candid account of his early years, he opens up to Biggar on his bulimia, his drinking, becoming hooked on steroids and his attempted suicide.
“Back in the 70s things were very different to what they are now,” he explains to the former Wales captain. “I had a very old-fashioned upbringing in a council estate. I went to Sunday school, went to chapel.
“I told my mum that when I got older I’d get a girlfriend, then get married, then have children and become a parent, grandparent.
“At 19 years of age, I had a girlfriend but, on occasions, I would find myself attracted to men. This was something totally alien, something I knew nothing about, something I’d never experienced before, something I hadn’t been told that could happen.
“And then I would hear this language around me every day about people in the LGBTQ+ community.”
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Steriod abuse
Owens continues: “If you think about it now, even today, but even more so back then, when you hear the words ‘faggot’, ‘homo’, ‘poof’, ‘gay’, they’re always used to describe something somebody doesn’t like.
“Kids will say, without meaning to be nasty or even thinking what they’re saying, ‘Oh, I hate school, it’s so gay’. Or, I don’t know, ’Did you see Wales play against England on the weekend? They were bloody hopeless they played like a bunch of poofs’.
“You never hear somebody say, ‘Did you see Wales play rugby on the weekend? They were brilliant. They played like a bunch of poofs’. Or, ‘Oh, I love school. It’s so gay’. It’s always used in a negative or nasty way.
“So when I’m hearing this language growing up at 19 years of age, I’m thinking, ‘my God, there’s no way I can be gay because nobody’s going to like me’.”
Between the ages of 19 and 26 Owens says he really struggled, became very depressed, spent a lot of time on his own.
“I started drinking a lot. I used to comfort eat a lot. I put a lot of weight on. I then became bulimic,” he reveals. “I started suffering from the eating disorder bulimia, where pretty much everything I would eat I would make myself sick afterwards.
“I lost a lot of that weight. I was about 16, 17 stones, I went down to 10, very thin, very pale. Then I went to the gym because I wanted to have a body that I felt confident in.
“Then I started using steroids. I got hooked on steroids. So when I was 25 years of age I was in a pretty bad place. I was bulimic, I was hooked on steroids, I was very very depressed – mental health issues – and I was having suicidal thoughts.”
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“I did something that I will regret for the rest of my life”
Everything came to a head one night when, according to Owens, he could no longer put up with the constant pain in his body and mind. He felt he had to get rid of it.
“I did something that I will regret for the rest of my life,” he adds. “I left a note for my mum and dad. I didn’t tell them why, I just said I could not carry on living my life any more and that I was going to end it.
“I left the house in the early hours of the morning and because I used to work on a farm I had a shotgun in the house. I loaded the gun, I took a few boxes of tablets that I’d saved up over a few months, a bottle of whiskey.
“What I actually took to end my life actually ended up saving me because I overdosed on the tablets and slipped into a coma. If that hadn’t happened I have no doubt today that I would have pulled the trigger of the gun.”
When they discovered the note Owens’ parents, Mair and Geraint, rang the police who despatched a helicopter to search for him.
He was found unconscious – “I was dying” – and airlifted to intensive care in West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen. The doctor later told him “Another 20 minutes or so and it would have been too late for us to save you”.
Even then Owens felt he could not tell friends and family why he had done what he did. Nobody in the world of rugby had come ‘out’. He was scared of being found out.
Then, one day, visiting hours came to a close and everybody left. Shortly after, his mum returned alone. She came into the room and sat on the and of his bed.
He recalls: “She said to me, ‘If you ever do anything like that again, then you may as well take me and my dad with you, because we don’t want to carry on living our life without you in it’. That’s all she said, then she left.
“I started crying to myself and I cried for hours and hours. Finally, I said to myself, ‘This is who I am. There’s no choice’.
“There are many things in life that you can choose: where you live, where you work, who you marry, what football or rugby team you support or play for. But you’re identity of who you are is not a choice. That’s the person I was born to be.”
Owens is asked whether he has any advice for young people today unsure of their place in the world?
“There are still some horrible people out there, you only have to look at social media,” he replies. “There are people who won’t like somebody, whether it’s the colour of their skin, their nationality, their religious beliefs, their sexuality.
“But the majority will embrace you and respect you for who you are. Don’t feel alone, don’t feel isolated. Talk to somebody if you’re struggling with it.”
The latest episode of A Load of BS on Sport, with Dan Biggar and Daniel Ross, is out now