Mitch Brown becomes first openly bisexual AFL player

Former West Coast Eagles defender Mitch Brown has become the first male Australian Football League player to publicly identify as bisexual, announcing on Wednesday that he played in the AFL for 10 years and is a bisexual man. Brown, 36, who played 94 games for West Coast between 2007 and 2016, said he made the disclosure in a message to The Daily Aus after watching coverage of another recent homophobic incident in the league.

Brown said his decision was prompted in part by last week’s four game suspension of Adelaide forward Izak Rankine for using a homophobic slur. Rankine’s ban was the sixth suspension handed down to an AFL-listed player for similar language in the past 16 months, a pattern Brown said made him decide he could no longer be silent. "It wasn't so much hours of contemplation. It was a moment in time for me, and it was seconds," he told The Daily Aus. "I had this feeling of peace, but more importantly, comfort and confidence."

Speaking about the culture he experienced while playing, Brown described a hypermasculine environment in which anti-gay banter was commonplace. He recounted overhearing teammates say they would "rather be in a cage full of lions than have a...