RUGBY PRIDE
THIS YEAR sees the 25th anniversary of London-based Kings Cross Steelers, accepted as the world’s first gay rugby club. If they set the ball rolling, it was Mark Bingham, a gay man and player with San Francisco Fog, who unwittingly triggered the exponential growth of the sport.
Bingham was one of the passengers who fought hijackers on the doomed United flight 93 on 9/11, saving lives by helping to prevent the plane reaching its intended target. His heroic death prompted friends at the Fog to play a tournament in his honour and from the eight teams, representing six clubs, that launched the Bingham Cup in 2002 has grown a biennial competition touching lives on every continent.
Participant numbers can fluctuate because of travel costs but the Bingham Cup is on an upward curve. The last edition saw 74 teams, four of them women’s teams, hit Amsterdam in 2018. “For the next one in Ottawa, we are expecting 85 to 100 teams; 100 is the magic number,” says Jeff Wilson, a past chairman of International Gay Rugby (IGR), formed in 2000.
“Culturally, we want a member of IGR to be one of the clubs that hosts it. The number of places able to host Bingham Cup is becoming fewer, so I’m hoping for an Edinburgh or a Johannesburg or a Brisbane to step up, somewhere there’s a national presence in rugby.”
There are now 88 IGR member clubs, ranging from five-time Bingham Cup winners Sydney Convicts to the likes of Tokyo Tyrants and Jo’burg’s Jozi Cats. The UK and North America remain the
