Casey Conway (born 1985) is an Australian of

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

descent. He was a semi-professional

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

player. After he quit in 2005 due to a shoulder injury, he

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, ...

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...

. He speaks against the lack of acceptance in general of homosexuality in sports and is an advocate for young Indigenous Australians. He was also a male

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided in ...

for the Australian swimwear brand

aussieBum aussieBum is an Australia, Australian men's swimwear and underwear manufacturer. Initially manufactured in Inner West, Sydney's inner west, a growing number of aussieBum products were later manufactured overseas in China, Bangladesh, Thailand ...

Early life and sporting career

Conway grew up in

Bluff Bluff or The Bluff may refer to: Places Australia * Bluff, Queensland, Australia, a town * The Bluff, Queensland (Ipswich), a rural locality in the city of Ipswich * The Bluff, Queensland (Toowoomba Region), a rural locality * Bluff River (New ...

Central Queensland Central Queensland is an imprecisely-defined geographical division of Queensland ( a state in Australia) that centres on the eastern coast, around the Tropic of Capricorn. Its major regional centre is Rockhampton. The region extends from the Cap ...

as one of five boys. He went to

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

Yeppoon Yeppoon () is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Livingstone, Queensland, Australia. Yeppoon is renowned for its beaches, tropical climate, and the islands out on the bay. Located from the city of Rockhampton, Yeppoon is the seat of ...

at St. Brendan's College, which had a specialised rugby league programme and is where he was

discovered Discovery is the act of detecting something new, or something previously unrecognized as meaningful, "portal". In sciences and academic disciplines, discovery is the observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and involves providin ...

Arthur Beetson Arthur Henry "Artie" Beetson Medal of the Order of Australia, OAM (21 January 1945 – 1 December 2011

for the

National Rugby League The National Rugby League (also known as the NRL Telstra Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is a professional rugby league competition in Oceania which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria (state), Victoria, the Austral ...

team the

Sydney Roosters Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club, known as the Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Eastern Suburbs. The club competes in the National Rugby Lea ...

. Conway joined the Sydney Roosters'

Jersey Flegg Cup The Jersey Flegg Cup is a junior rugby league competition played in New South Wales, Australia, contested among teams made up of players aged 21 or under. The competition is administered by the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL), and is named ...

team in 2003. At the time, he was still uncertain about his

sexuality Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied ...

and was socialising covertly on Sydney's gay scene, where he has described facing "casual racism". After discussion with club officials, Conway decided not to

come out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, ...

– publicly or to his team-mates – until after leaving the club in 2005. His retirement at the age of 22 was the result of a shoulder injury.

After retirement

After moving on from semi professional sport, and after a brief spell in fitness, Conway moved to work in youth work on Queensland's Gold Coast. He predominantly worked with young people that were disengaged from education as well as those within the youth justice and child protection systems. In a 2015 interview with

NITV National Indigenous Television (NITV) is an Australian free-to-air television channel that broadcasts programming produced and presented largely by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It includes the six-day-a-week ''NITV News Updat ...

when Conway did come out, he expressed disappointment that fellow Aboriginal boxing legend

Anthony Mundine Anthony Steven Mundine (born 21 May 1975) is an Australian former professional boxer and rugby league footballer. In boxing he competed from 2000 to 2021, and held the World Boxing Association (WBA) super-middleweight title twice between 2003 a ...

had claimed, two years previously, that homosexuality was not an acceptable part of Aboriginal culture. He did describe a perception of change in professional sport, however: : There's not too many rofessional athleteswho have come forward, but I definitely think there's been a change. There are lots of different sporting identities, clubs and codes that are saying, "we're for equality". I think that's really great. It's really positive. As well as youth work, Conway at one point was an Aboriginal male model. He has modelled for Australian swimwear brand

and Sluggers. Conway was a board director and ambassador for the youth-led LGBTQ organization Wear It Purple and represented it at the 2021

Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras or Sydney Mardi Gras is an event in Sydney, New South Wales attended by hundreds of thousands of people from around Australia and overseas. One of the largest LGBT festivals in the world, Mardi Gras is the ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Conway, Casey 1985 births Living people Australian Aboriginal rugby league team players Australian male models Gay models Indigenous Australian social workers Australian social workers LGBTQ rugby league players Australian LGBTQ models Australian gay sportsmen People from Central Queensland Rugby league players from Brisbane 21st-century Australian LGBTQ people Sportsmen from Queensland 21st-century Australian sportsmen