Rugby making progress on dispelling idea Gays are Soft

JACK DUNNE is sitting in one of the bars he used to visit as a teenager, laughing about the days when it hosted underage discos on its sticky dancefloor. He spent his school years tearing up the streets of Dublin, drinking Guinness, but there is one particular night that sticks in his memory. ‘I’d lost my friends on a night out and then the beers tell you what you’re doing,’ he says. ‘I was 18 or so and it was the first time I’d kissed a guy. A random guy in a nightclub. It was cool. It felt liberating. I realised I was bisexual when I was 15 but I kept it under the rug for a few years until I’d kind of accepted it myself. That night I was thinking, “Jeez, I wish I’d got this over with three years ago”. ‘At the same time, I was terrified people would find out. Really paranoid. I didn’t want to get caught. You’re scared of what everyone will think, really. As a teenager, you just want to fit in.’ At 6ft 7in and 18st 12lb, it is not easy to be discreet. Dunne barely fits through the doorways of some of the city’s old-fashioned pubs. Back then, he harboured dreams of making it as a professional rugby player — Leinster being the holy grail — but he was worried about how his team-mates would react. How would a bisexual be received in rugby’s macho, alpha-male world? ‘I was the captain of my school’s senior cup team and I didn’t want to risk anything, so I consciously waited for the rugby season to end before I came out. Obviously in rugby you’re showering with all the lads and stuff so you’re worrying about how they’ll react. I told one friend to start with and it was grand. Then I told everyone else and they were great. It wasn’t a huge thing but it felt like a massive weight off my chest.’ Dunne played for Ireland Under 20s, featuring in the same junior World Cup as Romain Ntamack and Marcus Smith, before eventually achieving his goal of representing Leinster’s first team. By the time he broke through, his sexuality was old news in the dressing room. ‘When I joined Leinster, everyone already knew. I went to a massive rugby school. Just in second rows alone there was James Ryan, Ross Molony, Ryan Baird, Oisin Dowling, myself. I’d always chatted about things with the academy lads and eventually some of the older lads might ask questions about it after a few pints. It was never unspoken. There was no taboo. ‘In teenage rugby locker rooms, it’s probably a more aggressive culture and you could definitely see how younger people would get forced out of the sport. But at this standard, in professional rugby, you can’t be an a***hole. When the Rainbow Cup was launched the other year, Tadhg Furlong was actually pushing for me to be the face of it! He’s a bit of an entrepreneur and was asking for a 30 per cent cut. He’s a mad man. A funny guy.’