April 4, 2023 • 33 mins
Welcome to the Crown & Anchor, Greyhounds! In this episode Christian and Brett have a conversation with sports activist and Ted Lasso fan Lou Englefield!
Currently, Lou serves as the Director of Pride Sports UK, the Campaign Director of Football v Homophobia, the Co-Chair of Pride House International, and a board member of the Fare Network.
We connected with Lou on Twitter through her work with the organization Football vs Homophobia, which is an international initiative opposing homophobia in football (aka soccer). FvH tackles this issue at all levels of the game, all around the world, in creative ways that both support queer and trans folks while also educating and empowering others to be confident and effective allies.
Of course, Lou’s a big fan of Ted Lasso, too. So we invited her on our show to chat about Ted and AFC Richmond squad, the work she does as a sports activist, and the representation of queer characters on Ted Lasso generally as well as the newly-cemented status of Colin as a queer character specifically.
And finally, let this serve as your official spoiler alert. If you have not yet watched Season 3, Episode 3 of Ted Lasso, you might wanna pause this episode now and catch up. We promise we’ll be here waiting when y’all come back.
More extensive show notes can be found on our website: http://www.tedlassopod.com/lou-englefield-football-vs-homophobia-ted-lasso
Richmond Til We Die is an episode-by-episode conversation about the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso, where we explore the characters, their relationships to each other, and how they're able to make us laugh until we can hardly breathe one moment and then feel with the deepest parts of our hearts the next. When you're here, you're a greyhound.
Currently, Lou serves as the Director of Pride Sports UK, the Campaign Director of Football v Homophobia, the Co-Chair of Pride House International, and a board member of the Fare Network.
We connected with Lou on Twitter through her work with the organization Football vs Homophobia, which is an international initiative opposing homophobia in football (aka soccer). FvH tackles this issue at all levels of the game, all around the world, in creative ways that both support queer and trans folks while also educating and empowering others to be confident and effective allies.
Of course, Lou’s a big fan of Ted Lasso, too. So we invited her on our show to chat about Ted and AFC Richmond squad, the work she does as a sports activist, and the representation of queer characters on Ted Lasso generally as well as the newly-cemented status of Colin as a queer character specifically.
And finally, let this serve as your official spoiler alert. If you have not yet watched Season 3, Episode 3 of Ted Lasso, you might wanna pause this episode now and catch up. We promise we’ll be here waiting when y’all come back.
More extensive show notes can be found on our website: http://www.tedlassopod.com/lou-englefield-football-vs-homophobia-ted-lasso
Richmond Til We Die is an episode-by-episode conversation about the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso, where we explore the characters, their relationships to each other, and how they're able to make us laugh until we can hardly breathe one moment and then feel with the deepest parts of our hearts the next. When you're here, you're a greyhound.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Welcome to the crown on Inger Greyhounds. This is Richmond Till We Die,
a conversation about the Apple TV Plusshow ted Lasso, where we explore the
characters, their relationships to each other, and how they're able to make us
laugh until we can hardly breathe onemoment and then feel with the deepest parts
of our hearts the next I'm Brettand it takes two to tango, but
(00:35):
only one to do a podcast intro, and my co host Christian and I
are so excited to present our nextconversation to y'all today. Our guest for
this episode is Lou Inglefield, whoworks with several UK based organizations as a
sports activist. Currently she serves asthe director of Pride Sports UK, the
campaign director of Football Versus Homophobia,the co chair of Pride House International,
(00:59):
and a board member of the FairNetwork. We connected with Lu on Twitter
through her work with the organization FootballVersus Homophobia, which is an international initiative
opposing homophobia in football aka soccer.Football Versus Homophobia tackles this issue at all
levels of the game all around theworld in creative ways that both support queer
and trans folks in the football communitywhile also educating and empowering others to be
(01:22):
confident and effective allies. Of course, Lose a massive fan of ted Lasso
two, so we invited her onour show to chat about Ted and the
AFC Richmond Squad, the work shedoes as a sports activist, and the
representation of queer characters on ted Lassogenerally, as well as the newly cemented
status of Colin as a queer characterspecifically. And finally, let this serve
as your official spoiler alert. Ifyou have not yet watched season three,
(01:46):
episode three of ted Lasso, youmight want to pause this episode now and
catch up. We promise we'll behere waiting when y'all come back. So
Greyhounds please join us in giving awarm welcome to lu Inglefield. Thank you
so much for being with us.Lou, thank you for having me on.
It's very exciting to be here.Yeah. Well, we can not
(02:07):
wait to chat ted Lasso with youand about all your work. But first
things first, one of the reasonswe embouted you here. You're a big
fan of the show Ted Lasso.Why did you start watching the show and
when did you know you love theshow? Yeah? You know, I
can't remember why I started watching it. I cannot remember if my colleague Jen
had started watching it, but Ithink I maybe made her watch it anyway,
(02:29):
So that's gone down in the kindof annals of history. One of
us recommended it to the other oneand and I was kind of like,
you know, I was told,oh, yeah, you know, Ted
Lasso, it's got some good reviews. People are saying good things about it.
And I was like, oh,you know what, I like work
in football. Do I really thenwant to watch something about football? Is
(02:52):
you know, like in my entertainmenttime, I might want to watch something
slightly different that doesn't evolve around football. And any way, I started watching
it, and I think I justgot it hooked in like really quickly.
I don't think there was like onestandout moment for me, but I think
it had like these unique combination ofthings that I found really appealing. So
(03:17):
it's a kind of underdog story,which I love, you know, and
and so that kind of you know, that kind of like appealed to me,
I think on a kind of likeemotional level. And then I think
there's something just you know, thekind of plot device, which is,
(03:38):
you know, this American from thewrong sport, the wrong kind of football
comes to to to British football andm and then kind of what that means
and about how there's an outside viewon British football culture. And I think
that some of that is incredibly welldone and incredibly hilarious. And I also
(04:01):
think as well, you know,for me, I spend a lot of
time working in football. It's allvery serious. I'm tackling homophobia on a
day to day basis, and soI have to think, you know,
very critically about football a lot ofthe time. And then just having this
show where you know that makes youlaugh at about some of those kind of
(04:24):
cultural issues I just I found veryaddictive. I think you're a Manchester City
supporter, how did you feel aboutthem being that sort of soft villain in
the first couple of seasons and areyou happy that ted Lasso fans can now
direct their ire toward west Ham instead. Well, I'm not going to say
(04:44):
anything about west Ham because I don'twant to upset colleague sumer in the whore
west Ham supporters, but I think, you know, in terms of being
a man City fan like one,we're really used to people, you know,
being people's villains, you know,and on one hand and then on
the other hand, Man City fansare notorious for being able to laugh at
(05:06):
themselves. So, you know,one of one of our biggest songs,
which I won't say because it containsswear words, but one of the kind
of standard City songs is about howwe always lose football and we just don't
care because we've all had a drink. And that's basically the bottom line.
And that is sung at the edgehad you know that was sung in nineteen
(05:30):
eighty nine when we were in theyou know, the old kind of like
second division, and it sung nowwhen you know when Man City are on
much, you know, while ohwhat Man City are. So I think
there's a lot of a lot ofhistory of Man City fans being able to
laugh at themselves. So yeah,I wasn't offended, and I'm also find
(05:54):
of slightly used to it, youknow these days. Anyway, as we're
watching a season three now we're seeingColin now as an explicitly queer character,
and that's different. It was sortof hinted at in ways that a lot
of times was limited and problematic.In the first couple of seasons, we
also had the scene at the endof season two with Keiley and the woman
(06:18):
from Barkingham Palace that people were kindof raised an eyebrow about. As we're
just an episode or two into nowColin's story, as we're experiencing it,
what would you say is like thebest case scenario for his story arc?
Well, I suppose what I wouldlike to see is, you know,
(06:41):
a story in which ultimately he's ableto be his authentic self and still be
part of the you know, AFCRichmond changing room and you know, and
be welcome and accepted in that space. So I think that one of the
things that ted Lasso was done reallywell is to allow a discussion of football
(07:05):
which embraces a diversity of masculinities.And one of the things that we really
struggle with around football, or traditionallyhave and one of the reasons that homophobia
is quite prevalent is because masculinity isvery prescribed in British football. You've got
to be a certain way, andyou've kind of got to play the part.
(07:29):
And there's loads and loads of storiesof footballers who've done that, you
know, like even the most recentwell no Yacob Yankto came out but before
Jacob Yankto came out. You know, Jake Daniels, who plays here for
Blackpool, who's a really young guy, you know, was seventeen when he
came out, he's now eighteen.You know, talked about knowing that he
was gay from a really early ageand in his teenages, you know,
(07:53):
pretending to have girlfriends and stuff becausehe couldn't quite be himself. So so
anything any kind of like story thatcomes out of it in which you know,
Colin's able to be himself and isstill part of still part of the
club, still part of that culture, would be really great. Of course.
(08:15):
The other the other issue here,as we saw at the end of
the last episode, is Trent rimSo there's that, you know. One
of the things that I'm really interestedin is how that's going to play out
in terms of the role of themedia, because certainly in the UK we've
had like massive problems with media speculationaround gay players. It drives us all,
(08:37):
Matt, you know, it's somethingthat you know that you know,
they'll do kind of like French frontpage headlines in their tabloids of like two
Premier League aces due to come outand these kind of these kind of sensationalist
stories. So what I'm hoping foris that you know, Trent has some
(09:01):
integrity and that maybe, for example, you know, there is a way
in which you know, Trent canmaybe support the coming out of the player.
I don't know, but that's whatthat's ultimately what I'd like to see,
a really positive story that's in linewith some of the other coming out
(09:22):
stories we've seen in football recently.Yeah, there was definitely some sort of
media little dust kick up right beforeJake Daniels like sort of had his full
announcement, Like there was even speculationthat now, like looking back, you
can kind of see, oh,someone had gotten wind of the story and
didn't quite like scoop it, butlike sort of tried to or like sort
of you know, raise awareness ina kind of a negative light or in
(09:46):
just sort of a very like salaciousway. And yeah, as you say,
that's not helpful. It's not helpfulfor the player or for other for
other players who might be closeted andwanting to think about what it might look
like to be their true selves andto be out or in whatever way that
it means for them. And soyeah, that's that's really tough, and
I, like you said, Iwhen just when it comes to Trent Krim,
(10:09):
like he no longer is employed bya media outlet that we know of,
but still like reporters gonna report andlike, you know, that's that's
part of the job as a mediamember. And I do hope that there
is a way, like you said, for Colin to be able to kind
of control his story. And Iwill say, just on that note,
since we're doing a tiny bit ofspeculation when Colin's boyfriend situation ship whoever,
(10:31):
this guy Michael is to him atthe moment when he walked into the restaurant.
At first I thought, oh,some of the guys already know.
That's really cool. And then itcomes to find out, you know,
he's like, oh, I'm Colin'swing man, this and that and the
other, you know. So Iwas a little bit bummed out by,
like, Okay, yes, we'redoing a full like closeted story and like,
so we're gonna I think we're gonnasee a journey for Colin. I
really hope that we do. Yeah, I think so. And I think
(10:54):
that's one of the things for meabout Ted Lasso as well, is that
on the face of it, it'sjust a really jovial, you know,
lighthearted, utterly romantic take on football. I mean, it's preposterous, isn't
it, right, the absolute overwhelmingmajority of the plot lines. But one
of the things that they do reallywell is the telling of human stories within
(11:18):
that I think. So, youknow, so I just hope that they
handle this in a really kind ofyou know, in a really positive way,
and you know, and they don'ttrick it out unnecessarily, but that
you know, that it becomes astory that that is about a celebration ultimately,
(11:39):
that would be really cool. Wecame to know you through your work
with Football Versus Homophobia. We cameacross the organization online on Twitter and started
following it and seeing all of thework that was going on, and then
have subsequently had the opportunity to meetyou a bit. Can you share with
us a little about your intro intothis type of work and share with our
(12:05):
listeners to just the origins and evolutionof Football Versus Homophobia? Yeah? Sure.
So. Basically I was working ini think around two thousand and three
for a charity and not for profitin the UK that provided kind of health
and well being opportunities for LGBTQ pluspeople. And I was based in Manchester
(12:33):
and to cut a long story short, the role came to an end and
I thought what am I going todo next? And so I, along
with somebody else, a guy calledTrevor Burchick, set up an organization called
Pride Sports and we started working reallyin football, I would say, in
about I don't know, maybe twothousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
(12:56):
And around that time a group ofactivists from Brighton, right down on
the south coast of England had setup an organization called the Justin Campaign,
which was about honoring the memory ofJustin Fashion who And we were kind of
at that time there was hardly anybodyworking in this space at all, and
(13:18):
we kind of got together on anumber of occasions and talked about how we
could drive football forward, how wecould drive change forward. You know,
what was our ten year plan,what were our ten year goals? And
one of the things that we talkedabout was how there was no campaign in
football that specifically addressed homophobia. Sopeople talked about discrimination in football, but
(13:43):
they weren't talking, they weren't say, they weren't naming it, you know,
And one of the biggest problems withfootball at that time was that the
complete invisibility of LGBTQ plus people.So you would have conversations with people about
phobic language, and they were justkind of like, well, why does
(14:03):
it matter. There's no one gayin football anyway, So you know,
if you call somebody a homophobic term, you know there's an invisible victim.
There's no victim really because the personwe're shouting that term out is probably straight.
So why does it matter? Sowe felt that we needed something that
kind of described the issue, andthe Justin campaign absolutely brilliantly went away and
(14:26):
created this campaign Football Versus Homophobia,which I always say worked really well because
what it did was it kind ofpositioned football, the football family against the
thing that we wanted to get ridof. So at that point, it
wasn't you know, it was along time ago. We weren't talking about
inclusion in the way that we arenow and embracing kind of diversity in the
(14:52):
way we were now. We weresaying, no, this is a problem
and we've got to tackle it.And we as football a naturally against it,
aren't we. And so they setup the campaign, and they were
just at that time a group ofvolunteers. You know, they were you
know, university lecturers and artists andstudents and you know, and a small
(15:16):
group of people like like one wasa social work I think, there were
a small group of people and andof course it was the right campaign at
the right time, and it massivelyblew up. And then what happened was
some of the people who were involvedin it were kind of like, whoa,
you know this is this is absolutelymassive, and this is really serious,
(15:39):
and we were being asked to doall these things and actually, you
know, we've all got day jobs. So they came to us at Pride
Sports and they were like, youknow, will you help us run this
campaign? And we said, yeah, of course we would. So we
started running kind of jointly with themfor a season. In the second season
we were kind of ninety person runningthe campaign, and then the third season
(16:02):
we just took it over all togetherbasically. So yeah, we've been kind
of running it on our own sincetwenty fourteen and jointly since twenty twelve.
Well, it's brilliant work that you'lldo. We love I love the whole
everything you'll share from the Twitter accountis like so helpful, which is again
(16:23):
the way we connected with it.In many ways, sports, whether we're
talking about English football, American football, you know, basketball, whatever,
sport is a microcosm of society.So it's really not a surprise that homophobia
is present in sports as it iseverywhere else. So what are like one
or two unique aspects of homophobia infootball, specifically that people who don't follow
(16:45):
the sport might be unaware of orfind surprising. Okay, so I think
the first thing is to say,not only is football a microcosm of society.
Like I've had this conversation with peoplemany times over the years when people
will say that, you know,kind of football reflects society, And actually,
what I think is about male football, so male soccer or male sports
(17:11):
generally is that they tend to bethey tend to magnify society because when you've
got a load of guys together inmale only environments, you know, men
learn from a really really early agethat the best way to be part of
the group is to try and otherother people in that group. You know,
(17:34):
so if you're gay, then obviouslyI'm heterosexual. You know, if
you're weak, then I'm strong.So that's something that guys kind of learn
growing up in junior sports. Andthen, you know, because that hasn't
been dealt with critically until really relativelyrecently, you have a culture of that.
(17:55):
So there are still people in theBritish game, you know, like
coaches for some coaches for example,some traditional people in the game who who
still have those attitudes, and youknow, there are still young men coming
through the system with those kind ofyou know, very magnified kind of like
that kind of masculinity, kind ofthat jostling for position, you know,
(18:21):
and of course that's really intensified inEnglish football or British football because there's so
much at stake. You know,you've got something like you know, you
have a load of kids coming throughfootball academies, so there's so much competition
there as well. I think someof the unique things in kind of like
UK football, like British football,from what I understand, that are different
(18:45):
from like US soccer, is thatit's you know, English football, I
imagine, is much more like Americanfootball in terms of its culture. You
know, I think in US socceryou see quite a lot of radical fan
activity. You see you see alot more kind of diversity there. I
think that that that's like really exciting, and you know, I'd love to
(19:08):
go to a soccer game in theUnited States and I haven't been, so
it'd be really interesting to hear aboutthat. But you know, for for
a really long time, you know, British football was very monolithic. It
was really the place that kind ofmen went. You know that men went
to football as fans that you know, women didn't go to football, children
(19:33):
didn't go to football. Who wouldever take their children to football? And
hear some of the things that weresaid at the game, So you know,
so there is a history of likehomophobic chanting, sexism, misogyny,
transphobia, racism that is really quiteentrenched in the has been quite entrenched in
(19:53):
the British game. And there areorganizations like Football Versus Homophobia or for example,
Kick It Out that are working tokind of challenge some of those kind
of cultural cultural things. And Ihave to say, in the time that
I've been working in this space,we have seen a huge amount of change.
We focused a lot on this ideaof toxic masculinity and how difficult it
(20:18):
is to be an out gay malefootball player. I don't know how it
is exactly in England, but inthe United States since the mid nineties,
it has become much easier to bean out lesbian player in sports. And
at the same time now like fora long time, women's sports didn't get
(20:38):
the same media coverage that men's sportsdo. And so now that there's more
popularity of women's sports and more coveragethan like, sometimes that can bring more
of the unsafey elements like the hatersand the homophobia and the sexism and all
that. What is the lay ofthe land in England when it comes to
(21:00):
the work that you do with thewomen's game in some of the challenges you
see there that maybe you don't seeon the men's side. I mean,
also, how has it been goingas women's sports has become more popular and
elevated in stature? Wow? SoI suppose one of the things that we're
(21:22):
constantly battling is the assumption that everything'sokay in the women's game. You know
that there are out gay players inthe women's game, so you know,
we don't need to worry about that, do we? And then what we
forget is that there's an entire kindof infrastructure around the women players. And
(21:42):
we also know that, you know, there are some persistent homophobic ideas.
You know, the idea that thatif you play football as a woman that
you're gay, you know, isa persistent stereotype some players. You know,
are some players in the women's gamewho you know, maybe don't understand
(22:04):
what all the issues are, youknow, maybe feel uncomfortable about their being
the number of like queer women inthe game and what that means, and
that that's something to be ashamed of. So there's definitely work to do there.
I mean, you know, inthe training that we do. You
(22:25):
know, I've done training before withmale coaches who have said homophobic things and
they're working in the women's game,you know, So so yeah, there
are issues. There are definitely issuesto deal with there. You know,
we've got a major situation in theUK at the moment where I mean,
(22:45):
you know, I'm speaking to folksin the US, but you know,
there's a major issue around transphobia inthe UK at the moment, and you
know, transphobia and the media,and we're starting to see transfer rhetoric in
politics as well, and you know, so that's something that targets the women's
(23:07):
game much more so around sport.It's all about you know, trans women,
trans women kind of playing in thegame and whether that's okay or not.
And one of the things that's beenreally fantastic from the United States is
seeing female players speak out against transphobicrhetoric and to talk about the inclusion of
(23:29):
trans women in the game, andthat's been kind of like really really powerful,
and you know, amongst active players, we have less of that,
less of that in the UK atthe moment, and that would be something
that would be great to see.And I also imagine there are opportunities in
the women's game to talk much moreabout those kind of issues of transphobia at
(23:53):
the moment as well. But yeah, there's just this assumption that, you
know, homophobia doesn't exist in oraround the women's game, and of course
it does. You mentioned that womenhave to exist within these structures, work
within these structures, and one ofthose structures is FIFA, And I'm not
even sure like what word I shoulduse to describe it, because problematic doesn't
(24:14):
really cover it. Maybe like diabogicis our characterization of FIFA. But you
were recently sharing about the situation whereFIFA failed to guarantee that captains of the
national teams competing at the upcoming Women'sWorld Cup this summer would be allowed to
wear the anti discrimination One Love armband. In your mind, what's the
(24:34):
importance of that symbol as one ofinclusion as opposed to as some people categorize
it, like strictly as a politicalstatement. Yeah, well that's so that's
an interesting question, isn't it.So? I think there's some interesting background
is that the One Love arm bandto start with, wasn't an explicitly LGBTQ
(25:00):
plus inclusive arm band. You know, it's an antidiscrimination arm band that comes
from the campaign out of the Netherlands. So on one hand, when the
one lar Love arm band was beingtalked about, I was a bit kind
of like, oh, come on, folks, can't we do a bit
better than that? You know thatthe real issues that we're talking you know,
there's a load of issues here we'retalking about in Katar. But in
(25:22):
terms of armed bands, you know, we've got rainbow arm bands, we've
got their intersects inclusive arm bands thatwe now do at football versus homophobia.
Why are we going for something likethe one Love armband? And then like
the One Love arm band became likethe most contentious thing ever and that was
quite extraordinarily And I feel that personallyfrom having kind of like worked in this
(25:47):
space for a long time. Iknow that FIFA didn't see rainbows or you
know, the rainbow kind of symbolismsas anything other than a symbol of inclusion.
It wasn't seen. It was originallyseen as a kind of political thing.
Then it became much more accepted asa symbol of inclusion, and then
(26:07):
it became politicized around Ktar and Ithink that, you know, we cannot
think that that isn't anything to dowith the environment in which the World Cup
was taking place, you know,about FIFA's relationship with the Supreme Committee.
We were told that you know,rainbow flags, rainbow symbolism would be allowed,
(26:30):
and then it wasn't. You know, we had you know, one
of the most famous people in Welshfootball, Laura McAllister, having her bucket
hat pomfuscode at stadium. So Ithink the whole thing around it being being
political is really problematic, you know. But also you know, we're living
(26:51):
in a world and at a timewhen we are seeing a pushback against LGBTQ
plus people and communities as well.So we also have to be a realistic
that this isn't just confined to football, you know, that that we're seeing
this in kind of wider society,and you know, discussions like setting in
(27:12):
the UK, any kind of conversationabout trans inclusion is kind of inherently politicized.
You know. We were just usedto be the kind of you know,
oh, Pride Sports, you know, the LGBTQ plus inclusion organization,
and now we're seen as kind oflike the pro transactivists, you know,
(27:33):
and that the nature of our organizationhas been politicized by others. And and
that's really really useful when you wantto exclude people, isn't it, you
know, to to make people,to make it appear as if people are
you know, hugely political or thosepolitical gained had or that in some way,
(27:57):
you know, there's something other thanyou know, justice and inclusion that
motivates your work. Footbarbarus Homophobia hasworked with a lot of clubs and a
lot of supporters groups, and sowhile I'm sure there are some that have
been frustrating and heartbreaking to work with, there are others that have shown a
lot of growth and been encouraging towork with. So taking that experience,
(28:22):
say you were asked to come inand work with AFC Richmond, what would
you want them to do, expectthem to do, push them to do
When it comes to inclusion and activismin football, well, I think there's
a whole load of things that couldbe done. So, you know,
football versus homophobia is largely an educationcampaign, So we would want to be
(28:45):
working with like the first team forexample, you know, talking to them
about the need to be inclusive,talking to them about things like the language
they use and you know, homophobicbehaviors, you know, those kinds of
issues. You know, we wouldalso want to be working with the coaching
staff. I mean, you know, just let me at Ted Lasso and
(29:07):
coach Beard and Roy. You know, I'm all over that. So we
would also want to be working withthose people because the coaching team at any
club are the people who create theenvironment. And you know, there's a
whole load of work there around coachingLGBTQ plus athletes that would be really valuable
(29:27):
to any kind of coaching team.Then we would be talking to them about
their their academy. So obviously theAFC Richmond has an academy, so we
would want to be talking to thecoaches there and the young players coming through
the academy as well, and youknow, talking to them about inclusion also.
(29:49):
You know, something that we're thinkingmore about at the moment is the
way that athletes who might be alliescan talk to the media about these issues,
because I think that one of thethings that we have in the UK
don't know about the US is thatmale footballers are a bit nervous around talking
about these issues. They may nothave the right language, so they may
(30:11):
be like, oh, yeah,I'm okay with gay people, I'm okay
with trans people, but I don'treally know how to talk about that,
and if I stop talking about it, the press will be all over it.
So you know, how do Ikind of navigate that space? And
I'd want to pull in our friendsthat sports me d lgbt plus for example,
to do some of that work withus around that. Then it would
(30:33):
be great to see an LGBTQ PlusSupports group set up at AFC Richmond as
well, because visibility in the standsis really really important and there are undoubtedly
LGBTQ plus supports of AFC Richmond becauseI'm one, so there must be loads
of them and so that would bereally good. And then some staff I
(30:56):
think around you know, visible support, so you know, designating a game
to the Football Versus Homophobia campaign inFebruary, or you know, doing something
for the Football Versus Transphobia Week ofAction. So you know, some basic
stuff around ally ship learning, listening, respecting, and then making a show
(31:18):
of support and also then having akind of zero tolerance around around homophobia.
You know, maybe having a reportingline or letting your fans know how they
can report discrimination education for stewards sothey can hear that if anything goes off
in the stands, then stewards candeal with that, they can be on
(31:40):
that straight away. So I mean, honestly, I could have a field
day. Well. I think thebig takeaway there is that there's more to
this than just telling people that likeFlipper switch and start being homophobic. It
takes strategic initiatives that are based onyou know, the needs of the club,
and there may be a lot ofneeds and there are a lot of
(32:00):
needs at every club and so that'swhere an organization like yours becomes invaluable because
you have the experience and you canguide supporters, groups, fans, players
clubs through this process. So thankyou for all of the work that you're
doing. Thank you for sharing someof that with us, and we encourage
our fans to go and check outthat work on your website and on your
(32:22):
Twitter account and to find ways toget involved. Fantastic. Thank you so
much for having me on. Yeah, thanks, and that is our show.
We had a wonderful time chatting withLou about ted Lasso and all the
amazing work she's doing with Pride SportsUK and Football versus Homophobia. You can
(32:45):
find links to lose social media accountsas well as those of the organizations we
mentioned and websites and ways to getinvolved in all of that in the show
notes, which is at ted lassopoddot com. We'll be back soon with
more ted Lasso goodness, but youcan keep the conversation going with us on
Twitter and Instagram in the meantime.Our handle on both platforms is at ted
(33:05):
lassopod. This episode of Richmond TillWe Die has brought to you by Gin
and Kerosene Productions. It was producedby me Brett and my co host Christian.
If you're enjoying the podcast, Pleasetake thirty seconds to subscribe to our
feed and give the show a fivestar review on Apple Podcasts or a five
star rating on Spotify. Heck,if you're feeling generous, you could even
do both. As always, weappreciate all the ways y'all share your love
(33:28):
and support for the pod. Okay, I'm Brett signing off for Christian and
Lou Inglefield. Thanks for listening.Until next time, Cheers y'all, My God,
Welcome to the crown on Inger Greyhounds. This is Richmond Till We Die,
a conversation about the Apple TV Plusshow ted Lasso, where we explore the
characters, their relationships to each other, and how they're able to make us
laugh until we can hardly breathe onemoment and then feel with the deepest parts
of our hearts the next I'm Brettand it takes two to tango, but
(00:35):
only one to do a podcast intro, and my co host Christian and I
are so excited to present our nextconversation to y'all today. Our guest for
this episode is Lou Inglefield, whoworks with several UK based organizations as a
sports activist. Currently she serves asthe director of Pride Sports UK, the
campaign director of Football Versus Homophobia,the co chair of Pride House International,
(00:59):
and a board member of the FairNetwork. We connected with Lu on Twitter
through her work with the organization FootballVersus Homophobia, which is an international initiative
opposing homophobia in football aka soccer.Football Versus Homophobia tackles this issue at all
levels of the game all around theworld in creative ways that both support queer
and trans folks in the football communitywhile also educating and empowering others to be
(01:22):
confident and effective allies. Of course, Lose a massive fan of ted Lasso
two, so we invited her onour show to chat about Ted and the
AFC Richmond Squad, the work shedoes as a sports activist, and the
representation of queer characters on ted Lassogenerally, as well as the newly cemented
status of Colin as a queer characterspecifically. And finally, let this serve
as your official spoiler alert. Ifyou have not yet watched season three,
(01:46):
episode three of ted Lasso, youmight want to pause this episode now and
catch up. We promise we'll behere waiting when y'all come back. So
Greyhounds please join us in giving awarm welcome to lu Inglefield. Thank you
so much for being with us.Lou, thank you for having me on.
It's very exciting to be here.Yeah. Well, we can not
(02:07):
wait to chat ted Lasso with youand about all your work. But first
things first, one of the reasonswe embouted you here. You're a big
fan of the show Ted Lasso.Why did you start watching the show and
when did you know you love theshow? Yeah? You know, I
can't remember why I started watching it. I cannot remember if my colleague Jen
had started watching it, but Ithink I maybe made her watch it anyway,
(02:29):
So that's gone down in the kindof annals of history. One of
us recommended it to the other oneand and I was kind of like,
you know, I was told,oh, yeah, you know, Ted
Lasso, it's got some good reviews. People are saying good things about it.
And I was like, oh,you know what, I like work
in football. Do I really thenwant to watch something about football? Is
(02:52):
you know, like in my entertainmenttime, I might want to watch something
slightly different that doesn't evolve around football. And any way, I started watching
it, and I think I justgot it hooked in like really quickly.
I don't think there was like onestandout moment for me, but I think
it had like these unique combination ofthings that I found really appealing. So
(03:17):
it's a kind of underdog story,which I love, you know, and
and so that kind of you know, that kind of like appealed to me,
I think on a kind of likeemotional level. And then I think
there's something just you know, thekind of plot device, which is,
(03:38):
you know, this American from thewrong sport, the wrong kind of football
comes to to to British football andm and then kind of what that means
and about how there's an outside viewon British football culture. And I think
that some of that is incredibly welldone and incredibly hilarious. And I also
(04:01):
think as well, you know,for me, I spend a lot of
time working in football. It's allvery serious. I'm tackling homophobia on a
day to day basis, and soI have to think, you know,
very critically about football a lot ofthe time. And then just having this
show where you know that makes youlaugh at about some of those kind of
(04:24):
cultural issues I just I found veryaddictive. I think you're a Manchester City
supporter, how did you feel aboutthem being that sort of soft villain in
the first couple of seasons and areyou happy that ted Lasso fans can now
direct their ire toward west Ham instead. Well, I'm not going to say
(04:44):
anything about west Ham because I don'twant to upset colleague sumer in the whore
west Ham supporters, but I think, you know, in terms of being
a man City fan like one,we're really used to people, you know,
being people's villains, you know,and on one hand and then on
the other hand, Man City fansare notorious for being able to laugh at
(05:06):
themselves. So, you know,one of one of our biggest songs,
which I won't say because it containsswear words, but one of the kind
of standard City songs is about howwe always lose football and we just don't
care because we've all had a drink. And that's basically the bottom line.
And that is sung at the edgehad you know that was sung in nineteen
(05:30):
eighty nine when we were in theyou know, the old kind of like
second division, and it sung nowwhen you know when Man City are on
much, you know, while ohwhat Man City are. So I think
there's a lot of a lot ofhistory of Man City fans being able to
laugh at themselves. So yeah,I wasn't offended, and I'm also find
(05:54):
of slightly used to it, youknow these days. Anyway, as we're
watching a season three now we're seeingColin now as an explicitly queer character,
and that's different. It was sortof hinted at in ways that a lot
of times was limited and problematic.In the first couple of seasons, we
also had the scene at the endof season two with Keiley and the woman
(06:18):
from Barkingham Palace that people were kindof raised an eyebrow about. As we're
just an episode or two into nowColin's story, as we're experiencing it,
what would you say is like thebest case scenario for his story arc?
Well, I suppose what I wouldlike to see is, you know,
(06:41):
a story in which ultimately he's ableto be his authentic self and still be
part of the you know, AFCRichmond changing room and you know, and
be welcome and accepted in that space. So I think that one of the
things that ted Lasso was done reallywell is to allow a discussion of football
(07:05):
which embraces a diversity of masculinities.And one of the things that we really
struggle with around football, or traditionallyhave and one of the reasons that homophobia
is quite prevalent is because masculinity isvery prescribed in British football. You've got
to be a certain way, andyou've kind of got to play the part.
(07:29):
And there's loads and loads of storiesof footballers who've done that, you
know, like even the most recentwell no Yacob Yankto came out but before
Jacob Yankto came out. You know, Jake Daniels, who plays here for
Blackpool, who's a really young guy, you know, was seventeen when he
came out, he's now eighteen.You know, talked about knowing that he
was gay from a really early ageand in his teenages, you know,
(07:53):
pretending to have girlfriends and stuff becausehe couldn't quite be himself. So so
anything any kind of like story thatcomes out of it in which you know,
Colin's able to be himself and isstill part of still part of the
club, still part of that culture, would be really great. Of course.
(08:15):
The other the other issue here,as we saw at the end of
the last episode, is Trent rimSo there's that, you know. One
of the things that I'm really interestedin is how that's going to play out
in terms of the role of themedia, because certainly in the UK we've
had like massive problems with media speculationaround gay players. It drives us all,
(08:37):
Matt, you know, it's somethingthat you know that you know,
they'll do kind of like French frontpage headlines in their tabloids of like two
Premier League aces due to come outand these kind of these kind of sensationalist
stories. So what I'm hoping foris that you know, Trent has some
(09:01):
integrity and that maybe, for example, you know, there is a way
in which you know, Trent canmaybe support the coming out of the player.
I don't know, but that's whatthat's ultimately what I'd like to see,
a really positive story that's in linewith some of the other coming out
(09:22):
stories we've seen in football recently.Yeah, there was definitely some sort of
media little dust kick up right beforeJake Daniels like sort of had his full
announcement, Like there was even speculationthat now, like looking back, you
can kind of see, oh,someone had gotten wind of the story and
didn't quite like scoop it, butlike sort of tried to or like sort
of you know, raise awareness ina kind of a negative light or in
(09:46):
just sort of a very like salaciousway. And yeah, as you say,
that's not helpful. It's not helpfulfor the player or for other for
other players who might be closeted andwanting to think about what it might look
like to be their true selves andto be out or in whatever way that
it means for them. And soyeah, that's that's really tough, and
I, like you said, Iwhen just when it comes to Trent Krim,
(10:09):
like he no longer is employed bya media outlet that we know of,
but still like reporters gonna report andlike, you know, that's that's
part of the job as a mediamember. And I do hope that there
is a way, like you said, for Colin to be able to kind
of control his story. And Iwill say, just on that note,
since we're doing a tiny bit ofspeculation when Colin's boyfriend situation ship whoever,
(10:31):
this guy Michael is to him atthe moment when he walked into the restaurant.
At first I thought, oh,some of the guys already know.
That's really cool. And then itcomes to find out, you know,
he's like, oh, I'm Colin'swing man, this and that and the
other, you know. So Iwas a little bit bummed out by,
like, Okay, yes, we'redoing a full like closeted story and like,
so we're gonna I think we're gonnasee a journey for Colin. I
really hope that we do. Yeah, I think so. And I think
(10:54):
that's one of the things for meabout Ted Lasso as well, is that
on the face of it, it'sjust a really jovial, you know,
lighthearted, utterly romantic take on football. I mean, it's preposterous, isn't
it, right, the absolute overwhelmingmajority of the plot lines. But one
of the things that they do reallywell is the telling of human stories within
(11:18):
that I think. So, youknow, so I just hope that they
handle this in a really kind ofyou know, in a really positive way,
and you know, and they don'ttrick it out unnecessarily, but that
you know, that it becomes astory that that is about a celebration ultimately,
(11:39):
that would be really cool. Wecame to know you through your work
with Football Versus Homophobia. We cameacross the organization online on Twitter and started
following it and seeing all of thework that was going on, and then
have subsequently had the opportunity to meetyou a bit. Can you share with
us a little about your intro intothis type of work and share with our
(12:05):
listeners to just the origins and evolutionof Football Versus Homophobia? Yeah? Sure.
So. Basically I was working ini think around two thousand and three
for a charity and not for profitin the UK that provided kind of health
and well being opportunities for LGBTQ pluspeople. And I was based in Manchester
(12:33):
and to cut a long story short, the role came to an end and
I thought what am I going todo next? And so I, along
with somebody else, a guy calledTrevor Burchick, set up an organization called
Pride Sports and we started working reallyin football, I would say, in
about I don't know, maybe twothousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
(12:56):
And around that time a group ofactivists from Brighton, right down on
the south coast of England had setup an organization called the Justin Campaign,
which was about honoring the memory ofJustin Fashion who And we were kind of
at that time there was hardly anybodyworking in this space at all, and
(13:18):
we kind of got together on anumber of occasions and talked about how we
could drive football forward, how wecould drive change forward. You know,
what was our ten year plan,what were our ten year goals? And
one of the things that we talkedabout was how there was no campaign in
football that specifically addressed homophobia. Sopeople talked about discrimination in football, but
(13:43):
they weren't talking, they weren't say, they weren't naming it, you know,
And one of the biggest problems withfootball at that time was that the
complete invisibility of LGBTQ plus people.So you would have conversations with people about
phobic language, and they were justkind of like, well, why does
(14:03):
it matter. There's no one gayin football anyway, So you know,
if you call somebody a homophobic term, you know there's an invisible victim.
There's no victim really because the personwe're shouting that term out is probably straight.
So why does it matter? Sowe felt that we needed something that
kind of described the issue, andthe Justin campaign absolutely brilliantly went away and
(14:26):
created this campaign Football Versus Homophobia,which I always say worked really well because
what it did was it kind ofpositioned football, the football family against the
thing that we wanted to get ridof. So at that point, it
wasn't you know, it was along time ago. We weren't talking about
inclusion in the way that we arenow and embracing kind of diversity in the
(14:52):
way we were now. We weresaying, no, this is a problem
and we've got to tackle it.And we as football a naturally against it,
aren't we. And so they setup the campaign, and they were
just at that time a group ofvolunteers. You know, they were you
know, university lecturers and artists andstudents and you know, and a small
(15:16):
group of people like like one wasa social work I think, there were
a small group of people and andof course it was the right campaign at
the right time, and it massivelyblew up. And then what happened was
some of the people who were involvedin it were kind of like, whoa,
you know this is this is absolutelymassive, and this is really serious,
(15:39):
and we were being asked to doall these things and actually, you
know, we've all got day jobs. So they came to us at Pride
Sports and they were like, youknow, will you help us run this
campaign? And we said, yeah, of course we would. So we
started running kind of jointly with themfor a season. In the second season
we were kind of ninety person runningthe campaign, and then the third season
(16:02):
we just took it over all togetherbasically. So yeah, we've been kind
of running it on our own sincetwenty fourteen and jointly since twenty twelve.
Well, it's brilliant work that you'lldo. We love I love the whole
everything you'll share from the Twitter accountis like so helpful, which is again
(16:23):
the way we connected with it.In many ways, sports, whether we're
talking about English football, American football, you know, basketball, whatever,
sport is a microcosm of society.So it's really not a surprise that homophobia
is present in sports as it iseverywhere else. So what are like one
or two unique aspects of homophobia infootball, specifically that people who don't follow
(16:45):
the sport might be unaware of orfind surprising. Okay, so I think
the first thing is to say,not only is football a microcosm of society.
Like I've had this conversation with peoplemany times over the years when people
will say that, you know,kind of football reflects society, And actually,
what I think is about male football, so male soccer or male sports
(17:11):
generally is that they tend to bethey tend to magnify society because when you've
got a load of guys together inmale only environments, you know, men
learn from a really really early agethat the best way to be part of
the group is to try and otherother people in that group. You know,
(17:34):
so if you're gay, then obviouslyI'm heterosexual. You know, if
you're weak, then I'm strong.So that's something that guys kind of learn
growing up in junior sports. Andthen, you know, because that hasn't
been dealt with critically until really relativelyrecently, you have a culture of that.
(17:55):
So there are still people in theBritish game, you know, like
coaches for some coaches for example,some traditional people in the game who who
still have those attitudes, and youknow, there are still young men coming
through the system with those kind ofyou know, very magnified kind of like
that kind of masculinity, kind ofthat jostling for position, you know,
(18:21):
and of course that's really intensified inEnglish football or British football because there's so
much at stake. You know,you've got something like you know, you
have a load of kids coming throughfootball academies, so there's so much competition
there as well. I think someof the unique things in kind of like
UK football, like British football,from what I understand, that are different
(18:45):
from like US soccer, is thatit's you know, English football, I
imagine, is much more like Americanfootball in terms of its culture. You
know, I think in US socceryou see quite a lot of radical fan
activity. You see you see alot more kind of diversity there. I
think that that that's like really exciting, and you know, I'd love to
(19:08):
go to a soccer game in theUnited States and I haven't been, so
it'd be really interesting to hear aboutthat. But you know, for for
a really long time, you know, British football was very monolithic. It
was really the place that kind ofmen went. You know that men went
to football as fans that you know, women didn't go to football, children
(19:33):
didn't go to football. Who wouldever take their children to football? And
hear some of the things that weresaid at the game, So you know,
so there is a history of likehomophobic chanting, sexism, misogyny,
transphobia, racism that is really quiteentrenched in the has been quite entrenched in
(19:53):
the British game. And there areorganizations like Football Versus Homophobia or for example,
Kick It Out that are working tokind of challenge some of those kind
of cultural cultural things. And Ihave to say, in the time that
I've been working in this space,we have seen a huge amount of change.
We focused a lot on this ideaof toxic masculinity and how difficult it
(20:18):
is to be an out gay malefootball player. I don't know how it
is exactly in England, but inthe United States since the mid nineties,
it has become much easier to bean out lesbian player in sports. And
at the same time now like fora long time, women's sports didn't get
(20:38):
the same media coverage that men's sportsdo. And so now that there's more
popularity of women's sports and more coveragethan like, sometimes that can bring more
of the unsafey elements like the hatersand the homophobia and the sexism and all
that. What is the lay ofthe land in England when it comes to
(21:00):
the work that you do with thewomen's game in some of the challenges you
see there that maybe you don't seeon the men's side. I mean,
also, how has it been goingas women's sports has become more popular and
elevated in stature? Wow? SoI suppose one of the things that we're
(21:22):
constantly battling is the assumption that everything'sokay in the women's game. You know
that there are out gay players inthe women's game, so you know,
we don't need to worry about that, do we? And then what we
forget is that there's an entire kindof infrastructure around the women players. And
(21:42):
we also know that, you know, there are some persistent homophobic ideas.
You know, the idea that thatif you play football as a woman that
you're gay, you know, isa persistent stereotype some players. You know,
are some players in the women's gamewho you know, maybe don't understand
(22:04):
what all the issues are, youknow, maybe feel uncomfortable about their being
the number of like queer women inthe game and what that means, and
that that's something to be ashamed of. So there's definitely work to do there.
I mean, you know, inthe training that we do. You
(22:25):
know, I've done training before withmale coaches who have said homophobic things and
they're working in the women's game,you know, So so yeah, there
are issues. There are definitely issuesto deal with there. You know,
we've got a major situation in theUK at the moment where I mean,
(22:45):
you know, I'm speaking to folksin the US, but you know,
there's a major issue around transphobia inthe UK at the moment, and you
know, transphobia and the media,and we're starting to see transfer rhetoric in
politics as well, and you know, so that's something that targets the women's
(23:07):
game much more so around sport.It's all about you know, trans women,
trans women kind of playing in thegame and whether that's okay or not.
And one of the things that's beenreally fantastic from the United States is
seeing female players speak out against transphobicrhetoric and to talk about the inclusion of
(23:29):
trans women in the game, andthat's been kind of like really really powerful,
and you know, amongst active players, we have less of that,
less of that in the UK atthe moment, and that would be something
that would be great to see.And I also imagine there are opportunities in
the women's game to talk much moreabout those kind of issues of transphobia at
(23:53):
the moment as well. But yeah, there's just this assumption that, you
know, homophobia doesn't exist in oraround the women's game, and of course
it does. You mentioned that womenhave to exist within these structures, work
within these structures, and one ofthose structures is FIFA, And I'm not
even sure like what word I shoulduse to describe it, because problematic doesn't
(24:14):
really cover it. Maybe like diabogicis our characterization of FIFA. But you
were recently sharing about the situation whereFIFA failed to guarantee that captains of the
national teams competing at the upcoming Women'sWorld Cup this summer would be allowed to
wear the anti discrimination One Love armband. In your mind, what's the
(24:34):
importance of that symbol as one ofinclusion as opposed to as some people categorize
it, like strictly as a politicalstatement. Yeah, well that's so that's
an interesting question, isn't it.So? I think there's some interesting background
is that the One Love arm bandto start with, wasn't an explicitly LGBTQ
(25:00):
plus inclusive arm band. You know, it's an antidiscrimination arm band that comes
from the campaign out of the Netherlands. So on one hand, when the
one lar Love arm band was beingtalked about, I was a bit kind
of like, oh, come on, folks, can't we do a bit
better than that? You know thatthe real issues that we're talking you know,
there's a load of issues here we'retalking about in Katar. But in
(25:22):
terms of armed bands, you know, we've got rainbow arm bands, we've
got their intersects inclusive arm bands thatwe now do at football versus homophobia.
Why are we going for something likethe one Love armband? And then like
the One Love arm band became likethe most contentious thing ever and that was
quite extraordinarily And I feel that personallyfrom having kind of like worked in this
(25:47):
space for a long time. Iknow that FIFA didn't see rainbows or you
know, the rainbow kind of symbolismsas anything other than a symbol of inclusion.
It wasn't seen. It was originallyseen as a kind of political thing.
Then it became much more accepted asa symbol of inclusion, and then
(26:07):
it became politicized around Ktar and Ithink that, you know, we cannot
think that that isn't anything to dowith the environment in which the World Cup
was taking place, you know,about FIFA's relationship with the Supreme Committee.
We were told that you know,rainbow flags, rainbow symbolism would be allowed,
(26:30):
and then it wasn't. You know, we had you know, one
of the most famous people in Welshfootball, Laura McAllister, having her bucket
hat pomfuscode at stadium. So Ithink the whole thing around it being being
political is really problematic, you know. But also you know, we're living
(26:51):
in a world and at a timewhen we are seeing a pushback against LGBTQ
plus people and communities as well.So we also have to be a realistic
that this isn't just confined to football, you know, that that we're seeing
this in kind of wider society,and you know, discussions like setting in
(27:12):
the UK, any kind of conversationabout trans inclusion is kind of inherently politicized.
You know. We were just usedto be the kind of you know,
oh, Pride Sports, you know, the LGBTQ plus inclusion organization,
and now we're seen as kind oflike the pro transactivists, you know,
(27:33):
and that the nature of our organizationhas been politicized by others. And and
that's really really useful when you wantto exclude people, isn't it, you
know, to to make people,to make it appear as if people are
you know, hugely political or thosepolitical gained had or that in some way,
(27:57):
you know, there's something other thanyou know, justice and inclusion that
motivates your work. Footbarbarus Homophobia hasworked with a lot of clubs and a
lot of supporters groups, and sowhile I'm sure there are some that have
been frustrating and heartbreaking to work with, there are others that have shown a
lot of growth and been encouraging towork with. So taking that experience,
(28:22):
say you were asked to come inand work with AFC Richmond, what would
you want them to do, expectthem to do, push them to do
When it comes to inclusion and activismin football, well, I think there's
a whole load of things that couldbe done. So, you know,
football versus homophobia is largely an educationcampaign, So we would want to be
(28:45):
working with like the first team forexample, you know, talking to them
about the need to be inclusive,talking to them about things like the language
they use and you know, homophobicbehaviors, you know, those kinds of
issues. You know, we wouldalso want to be working with the coaching
staff. I mean, you know, just let me at Ted Lasso and
(29:07):
coach Beard and Roy. You know, I'm all over that. So we
would also want to be working withthose people because the coaching team at any
club are the people who create theenvironment. And you know, there's a
whole load of work there around coachingLGBTQ plus athletes that would be really valuable
(29:27):
to any kind of coaching team.Then we would be talking to them about
their their academy. So obviously theAFC Richmond has an academy, so we
would want to be talking to thecoaches there and the young players coming through
the academy as well, and youknow, talking to them about inclusion also.
(29:49):
You know, something that we're thinkingmore about at the moment is the
way that athletes who might be alliescan talk to the media about these issues,
because I think that one of thethings that we have in the UK
don't know about the US is thatmale footballers are a bit nervous around talking
about these issues. They may nothave the right language, so they may
(30:11):
be like, oh, yeah,I'm okay with gay people, I'm okay
with trans people, but I don'treally know how to talk about that,
and if I stop talking about it, the press will be all over it.
So you know, how do Ikind of navigate that space? And
I'd want to pull in our friendsthat sports me d lgbt plus for example,
to do some of that work withus around that. Then it would
(30:33):
be great to see an LGBTQ PlusSupports group set up at AFC Richmond as
well, because visibility in the standsis really really important and there are undoubtedly
LGBTQ plus supports of AFC Richmond becauseI'm one, so there must be loads
of them and so that would bereally good. And then some staff I
(30:56):
think around you know, visible support, so you know, designating a game
to the Football Versus Homophobia campaign inFebruary, or you know, doing something
for the Football Versus Transphobia Week ofAction. So you know, some basic
stuff around ally ship learning, listening, respecting, and then making a show
(31:18):
of support and also then having akind of zero tolerance around around homophobia.
You know, maybe having a reportingline or letting your fans know how they
can report discrimination education for stewards sothey can hear that if anything goes off
in the stands, then stewards candeal with that, they can be on
(31:40):
that straight away. So I mean, honestly, I could have a field
day. Well. I think thebig takeaway there is that there's more to
this than just telling people that likeFlipper switch and start being homophobic. It
takes strategic initiatives that are based onyou know, the needs of the club,
and there may be a lot ofneeds and there are a lot of
(32:00):
needs at every club and so that'swhere an organization like yours becomes invaluable because
you have the experience and you canguide supporters, groups, fans, players
clubs through this process. So thankyou for all of the work that you're
doing. Thank you for sharing someof that with us, and we encourage
our fans to go and check outthat work on your website and on your
(32:22):
Twitter account and to find ways toget involved. Fantastic. Thank you so
much for having me on. Yeah, thanks, and that is our show.
We had a wonderful time chatting withLou about ted Lasso and all the
amazing work she's doing with Pride SportsUK and Football versus Homophobia. You can
(32:45):
find links to lose social media accountsas well as those of the organizations we
mentioned and websites and ways to getinvolved in all of that in the show
notes, which is at ted lassopoddot com. We'll be back soon with
more ted Lasso goodness, but youcan keep the conversation going with us on
Twitter and Instagram in the meantime.Our handle on both platforms is at ted
(33:05):
lassopod. This episode of Richmond TillWe Die has brought to you by Gin
and Kerosene Productions. It was producedby me Brett and my co host Christian.
If you're enjoying the podcast, Pleasetake thirty seconds to subscribe to our
feed and give the show a fivestar review on Apple Podcasts or a five
star rating on Spotify. Heck,if you're feeling generous, you could even
do both. As always, weappreciate all the ways y'all share your love
(33:28):
and support for the pod. Okay, I'm Brett signing off for Christian and
Lou Inglefield. Thanks for listening.Until next time, Cheers y'all, My God,
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