Casey Conway
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity | Aboriginal Australian |
| Residence | Gold Coast, Queensland |
| Occupation | Rugby league player, youth worker, model |
Casey Conway is a former rugby league player of Aboriginal Australian descent.[1] After his retirement in 2005 due to a shoulder injury, he came out as gay. He speaks against the lack of acceptance of homosexuality in Aboriginal culture and is a youth worker performing outreach for homeless kids. He is also well known as a male model for the Australian swimwear brand aussieBum.
Early life and sporting career
Conway grew up in Bluff in Central Queensland as one of five boys.[1] He went to boarding school in Yeppoon at St. Brendan's College, which had a specialised rugby league programme and is where he was discovered by Arthur Beetson[2] for the National Rugby League team the Sydney Roosters.[1][2]
Conway joined the Sydney Roosters' Jersey Flegg Cup team in 2003.[1] At the time, he was still uncertain about his sexuality and was socialising covertly on Sydney's gay scene, where he has described facing "casual racism".[1] After discussion with club officials, Conway decided not to come out — publicly or to his team-mates — until after leaving the club in 2005.[1] His retirement at the age of 22 was the result of a shoulder injury.[2]
After retirement
After retiring from professional sport, and after a brief spell in fitness, Conway moved to work in youth work on Queensland's Gold Coast.[1][2]
In a 2015 interview with NITV when Conway did come out, he expressed disappointment that fellow Aboriginal rugby league player Anthony Mundine had claimed, two years previously, that homosexuality was not an acceptable part of Aboriginal culture.[1][3] He did describe a perception of change in professional sport, however:
- There's not too many [professional athletes] who 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.[1]
As well as youth work, Conway has become noted as a prominent Aboriginal male model.[1] Having been discovered by a talent scout in Paddington, New South Wales,[2] he has modelled for Australian swimwear brands aussieBum[1][4] and Sluggers.[1][2][5]
References
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- Casey Conway on TwitterLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Casey Conway on Instagram
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- Pages with reference errors
- Use Australian English from October 2015
- All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English
- Use dmy dates from October 2015
- Articles which use infobox templates with no data rows
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- Year of birth missing (living people)
- Living people
- People from Central Queensland
- Aborigines in Queensland
- Sydney Roosters players
- Australian Aboriginal rugby league team players
- Rugby league players from Queensland
- Indigenous Australian welfare workers
- Australian male models
- Gay sportsmen
- LGBT sportspeople from Australia
- LGBT models
