SameSame.com.au ~ Inside Out Australia

A Trans-Man for All Seasons

Local News, By Travis de Jonk, 10th June, 2009

A female to male transexual AFL fan is destined to become the nation’s first transsexual to play competitive football. 25 year old footy fan and Collingwood supporter Will changed his sex two years ago. He has retained his original female reproductive organs because he feels technology is not advanced enough to create a properly functioning penis, but he has had a double mastectomy and chest surgery, and is taking the male hormone testosterone. He has also been living as a man for some time.

Will, who hopes to play for the Bendigo Football League, recently met with Glenn Scott, president of the Victorian Country Football League (VCFL). Scott told him that players would be educated on transgender and transsexual issues in order to ensure that Will would not be discriminated against. However in order to play Will was told by Scott that he would have to legally change the gender on his birth certificate, citing insurance reasons.

Will wrote a letter to former Collingwood captain Nathan Buckley, who was so touched by what he had read that he felt the need to spur on Will’s desire to play the game he loves.

“It was like he was pouring his heart out to me and I felt compelled to let him know that I respected the fact that he trusted me with that stuff,” Buckley told the Age, “I just think it’s tremendously courageous. Everyone should be encouraged to be themselves.”

“I’m just an ordinary guy who wants to play football, just with slightly different circumstances of how I came to be a guy,” Will told the Age.