The GAA Social: Kevin Penrose on coming out as gay in the GAA world

Aghyaran footballer Kevin Penrose is the guest on this week’s The GAA Social Podcast on BBC Sounds.

The surname ‘Penrose’ will be familiar to Tyrone football watchers with Kevin’s brother Martin having helped the Red Hand County win the All-Ireland Senior title in 2005 and 2008.

Growing up in a GAA household, football was the done thing and he played for the club during his childhood and teenage years.

However the realisation that he was gay after going to university in Liverpool in his early twenties led to Kevin pulling back from the club to an extent, although he did continue to have sporadic playing stints with the St Davog’s outfit based near Castlederg.

“The whole thing of changing room culture and lad culture was a thing. There are words thrown out there,” he recalls.

Kevin took several more years to come out to his family and friends and it was during a travelling stint in south east Asia in 2022 when he was aged 28, that he finally broke the news to his mother during a FaceTime call home.

The Aghyaran native painted a picture during the BBC podcast of the mental anguish that he went through for five days during a stint in the Thai city of Phuket as he weighed up whether to tell his family and friends about his sexuality.

“I felt the travelling was catching up on me and reaching burnout in a way,” Kevin recalls

“I was in a dark room in a hotel. The motivation was gone to travel and I was just like, ‘I can’t really do this any more.’ I was probably in the room for about five days straight. Wasn’t going out, wasn’t seeing anyone and I knew myself what it was.

“I needed to ring home and I needed to tell people and when I made the phone call on the Thursday or Friday with mum, it was just an instant weight lifted.”