The story of the gay Twitter athlete continues.
Last month, gay sites, news reporters, and news fans were all wrapped around the finger of an anonymous Twitter user who claimed to be a champion UK soccer player on the verge of coming out. Unfortunately, after a month of posing “any day nows,” the “gay footballer” later said, “He wasn’t strong enough” and deleted his account.
But apparently, that’s not the end of the story. Openly gay former rugby star Gareth Tomas says that, while the account was still active, he spoke with this mysterious “gay footballer.”
“Away from the cameras, I reached out to him and offered him my support and gave him my number and he called me,” Thomas said to the DailyStar, while promoting his documentary Garth Thomas V Homophobia. “I never asked him his name but he told me the club he played for.”
Unfortunately, that extended hand didn’t seem to pull much weight, as the anonymous account user later posted as his final tweet, “Call me all the names under the sun, belittle me and ridicule me, a lot will, and I can’t change that, but I’m not strong enough to do this.”
And while some question whether the Twitter account was ever legitimate at all, it seems Gareth Thomas believes so. He also sympathizes with the man behind the screen.
“He’s a young kid who had an understanding of who he was but didn’t have an understanding of where he fitted in.”
“There is vitriol towards him because he has decided that he is not ready for it,” he later added. “But it is his decision to make.”
