Euro Games 2012 - a big ol Bronze for Trowbridge

They can break your body... but they can never break your spirit. 

Although that's not strictly true - I feel beaten and destroyed from the eyebrows down - but happy. After a whirling, broken start, we won bronze.

For those of you who don't know me so well, I play for Trowbridge Tigers, a mainly straight, but gay friendly team looking to help the Football Versus Homophobia campaigns throughout the UK and internationally. 

Although straight myself. I've spent much of my early life on the receiving end of homophobic abuse (luckily only verbally unlike many less fortunate), and since I started playing football, myself and Tim Brown have jumped at every chance we can get to help bring football into the 16th century and make it more accepting of people, no matter their sexuality: perceived or otherwise. 

As part of this, Tim and I created Trowbridge Tigers (with almost no help from me to be honest) and we enter gay and straight tournaments nationally and internationally, looking to stand side by side with teams like The Justin Allstars and Stonewall - both of whom are gay teams playing in straight competitions. 

I'm also involved in a comedy feature film with some incredibly talented people, which highlights the issues faced by homosexual players in a very tongue in cheek fashion. Most importantly, the feature is NOT designed for a gay audience, it's designed for a mainstream audience - more on that to follow... oh, and it's called Switching Sides. 

So yes, excuse my slightly tangent heavy ramblings, but this is just to say, to everyone out there - quit it with the homophobia on the pitch please, it's so 1970's......