Can we put your statement of widening it to the Entertainment Industry as a 'stretch'? Or not? In fact why widen it at all we are talking about young footballer at a football club. You could have at least stopped at professional sports, or doesn't that help your argument?

I honestly have no idea which you have to have more courage for as I've got no personal or close experience of this. I suspect it varies depending upon your family environment and how accepting or not they would be. Can we just state that it's takes courage and bravery for both scenarios? Jake took a brave decision either way?

And your are right we don't know how many gay professional footballers there have been since Fashanu's announcement 32 years ago. We could take a guess based on national statistics and apply them to the total number of professional footballers to get an approximate number.

We we do however know is the number who have openly declared their ***uality in the past 32 years whilst still an active footballer and that tells us all a lot. Divide one number by the other and you are talking a fair few decimal places.

We of course don't know the personal reasons why gay footballers over the past 3 decades haven't you suggested a couple of very valid reasons. A third could be they were worried/scared/petrified of how their teammates or more likely opposition supporters would react to the news. A fourth could be that they would worry that it would detrimentally impact their football career. Presumably it's a game they love so would not wish to impact their love of the beautiful game or shorten it. Two more valid reasons?#balance.